The Bargersville, Indiana, Police Department is updating its fleet to Tesla Model 3s after they figured out that they will save a lot of money on gas, and that the Tesla Model 3s don't compromise performance compared to the Dodge Chargers. From a report: We are starting to see Tesla vehicles becoming quite popular with police departments all over the world. In Tesla's own backyard, the Fremont Police Department converted a used Tesla Model S to a patrol vehicle.

The Luxembourg Police converted two Model S sedans to patrol cars, and the largest fleet of Tesla police patrol vehicles is in Switzerland. At this point, there are about a dozen police departments going electric with Tesla vehicles, but we have never heard of one going with the Model 3 until now. The Bargersville Police Department decided to go for it.

A robot pilot is learning to fly -- and it has just passed its pilot's test and flown its first plane. But it has also had its first mishap too. From a report: Unlike a traditional autopilot, the ROBOpilot Unmanned Aircraft Conversion System literally takes the controls, pressing on foot pedals and handling the yoke using robotic arms. It reads the dials and meters with a computer vision system. The robot can take off, follow a flight plan and land without human intervention. ROBOpilot is a drop-in system meaning that the pilot's seat is removed and replaced with the robot. ROBOpilot has passed the Federal Aviation Administration's Practical Test for piloting light aircraft and carried out its first flight on August 9 in Utah. A few weeks later it also had its first incident where the robot was damaged, although the extent of the damage is not known.

Following an Apple notice that a "limited number" of 15-inch MacBook Pros may have faulty batteries that could potentially create a fire safety risk, multiple airlines have barred transporting Apple laptops in their checked luggage -- in some cases, regardless of whether they fall under the recall. From a report: Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Qantas Airways and Virgin Australia had joined the growing list of airlines enforcing policies around the MacBook Pros. In a statement by email, a spokesperson for Qantas told Gizmodo that "[u]ntil further notice, all 15 inch Apple MacBook Pros must be carried in cabin baggage and switched off for flight following a recall notice issued by Apple." Virgin Australia, meanwhile, said in a "Dangerous Goods" notice on its website that any MacBook model "must be placed in carry-on baggage only. No Apple MacBooks are permitted in checked in baggage until further notice."

Both Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways also recently instituted policies around the MacBook Pros. In a statement on its website over the weekend, Singapore Airlines said that passengers are prohibited from bringing affected models on its aircraft either in their carry-ons or in their checked luggage "until the battery has been verified as safe or replaced by the manufacturer." Bloomberg previously reported that airlines TUI Group Airlines, Thomas Cook Airlines, Air Italy, and Air Transat also introduced bans on the laptops. The cargo activity of all four is managed by Total Cargo Expertise, which reportedly said in an internal notice to its staff that the affected devices are "prohibited on board any of our mandate carriers."

A week after a popular JavaScript library started showing full-blown ads in the npm command-line interface, npm, Inc., the company that runs the npm tool and website, has taken a stance and plans to ban such behavior in the future. From a report: "We are always working on improving our policies and expand on our commitments to the community," Ahmad Nassri, npm, Inc. CTO told ZDNet in an email this week. "To that end, we're making updates to our policies to be more explicit about the type of commercial content we do deem not acceptable." According to these upcoming updates, npm will ban:
1. Packages that display ads at runtime, on installation, or at other stages of the software development lifecycle, such as via npm scripts.
2. Packages with code that can be used to display ads are fine. Packages that themselves display ads are not.
3. Packages that themselves function primarily as ads, with only placeholder or negligible code, data, and other technical content.

An unprecedented iPhone hacking operation, which attacked "thousands of users a week" until it was disrupted in January, has been revealed by researchers at Google's external security team. From a report: The operation, which lasted two and a half years, used a small collection of hacked websites to deliver malware on to the iPhones of visitors. Users were compromised simply by visiting the sites: no interaction was necessary, and some of the methods used by the hackers affected even fully up-to-date phones.

Once hacked, the user's deepest secrets were exposed to the attackers. Their location was uploaded every minute; their device's keychain, containing all their passwords, was uploaded, as were their chat histories on popular apps including WhatsApp, Telegram and iMessage, their address book, and their Gmail database. The one silver lining is that the implant was not persistent: when the phone was restarted, it was cleared from memory unless the user revisited a compromised site. However, according to Ian Beer, a security researcher at Google: "Given the breadth of information stolen, the attackers may nevertheless be able to maintain persistent access to various accounts and services by using the stolen authentication tokens from the keychain, even after they lose access to the device."

New Zealand is asking travelers to make sure they are immunized for measles before traveling to its biggest city, Auckland, as the country faces its worst outbreak in over 22 years. From a report: "If you're thinking of traveling into or out of Auckland, you should make sure you're vaccinated at least two weeks before you go," Associate Minister for Health Julie Anne Genter said in a statement this week. "This includes children from 12 months old," she added. Measles cases are rising globally, including in wealthy nations such as the United States and Germany, where some parents shun the vaccines mostly for philosophical or religious reasons, or concerns, debunked by medical science, that the vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) could cause autism.

In the US more than 1,200 cases have been recorded across 30 states in the worst outbreak since 1992, while other countries like the UK and Germany also recorded higher number of cases this year. In New Zealand, 849 cases of measles have been reported so far this year, making it New Zealand's worst measles epidemic since 1997.

theodp writes: The challenges of competing against free have long been noted. In the K-12 Computer Science education space, those who build a better mousetrap will still face the formidable challenge of competing with free offerings from tech giants such as Microsoft, which on Tuesday highlighted a new collaboration marrying tech-backed nonprofit Code.org's free CS Discoveries curriculum and Microsoft OneNote for Education. "Microsoft is a key Code.org partner," reminds a Microsoft blog post, "and the organizations have worked together over the past several years to boost computer science education globally." Free K-12 CS education offerings tied to their own products (or even expansion plans) are also pushed on educators by the likes of Google, Apple, and Amazon. We've already seen some of the hidden costs of free social media -- so should the tech-bankrolled 'free' K-12 CS education model promoted and led by Facebook and others, which apparently even involves monitoring every coding move schoolchildren make ("Young women want you to interact with their apps! They use 10% more interactive elements in their App Lab projects than boys"), set off any alarms?

President Donald Trump announced Thursday the official establishment of the U.S. military's Space Command. CNN reports: Space Command will become the 11th combatant command, joining the ranks of U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, and U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees Special Operations Forces. The command will initially consist of just 287 personnel and its final location has yet to be determined. Its responsibilities will be transferred primarily from U.S. Strategic Command. The command's establishment comes as the U.S. has grown increasingly concerned about threats to its satellites, which are critical to military operations and commercial business.

While the command's establishment has received broad support, Trump also spoke Thursday about the creation of a U.S. Space Force, a military branch his administration wants to see established under the Department of the Air Force, similar to how the Marine Corps sits under the Department of the Navy. Space Command "will soon be followed -- very importantly -- by the establishment of the United States Space Force as the sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces," Trump said, adding that the Space Force will "organize, train and equip warriors to support Space Command's mission." NPR notes that the Space Command was first established by the Air Force in 1985.

"As the Cold War was heating up, it was meant to coordinate missile defense and surveillance efforts," reports Engadget. "But by 2002, military focus had shifted to terrorism, and Space Command was merged into the unified Strategic Command. It was refocussed to the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceDaily: Social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Instagram are known to cause stress in users, known as technostress from social media. However, when faced with such stress, instead of switching off or using them less, people are moving from one aspect of the social media platforms to another -- escaping the causes of their stress without leaving the medium on which it originated. Research into the habits of 444 Facebook users revealed they would switch between activities such as chatting to friends, scanning news feeds and posting updates as each began to cause stress. This leads to an increased likelihood of technology addiction, as they use the various elements of the platform over a greater timespan. Researchers from Lancaster University, the University of Bamberg and Friedrich-Alexander Univeristat Erlangen-Nurnberg, writing in Information Systems Journal, found that users were seeking distraction and diversion within the Facebook platform as a coping mechanism for stress caused by the same platform, rather than switching off and undertaking a different activity. Professor Sven Laumer said: "We found that those users who had a greater social media habit- needed less effort to find another aspect of the platforms, and were thus more likely to stay within the SNS rather than switch off when they needed to divert themselves. The stronger the user's SNS habit, the higher the likelihood they would keep using it as a means of diversion as a coping behavior in response to stressors, and possibly develop addiction to the SNS."

"Users go to different areas of the platform which they see as being separate and that they use in different ways. With Facebook, there are features that take you into different worlds within the same platform. You can be in many different places all from the same application, for example following friends' activities, posting pictures about daily activities, switching to a chat feature or playing games."

The study has been published in the Information Systems Journal.

The FTC is investigating whether e-cigarette startup Juul Labs used influencers and other marketing to appeal to minors (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source). The Wall Street Journal reports: The probe, which hasn't previously been disclosed, began before the agency's antitrust review of a December deal in which tobacco giant Altria Group invested $12.8 billion to take a 35% stake in Juul, those and other people familiar with the matter said. The FTC is also determining whether to seek monetary damages, one of the people said. The agency in September first sent Juul a letter requesting information about its marketing, two of the people said. FTC investigators are looking at whether Juul engaged in deceptive marketing. The agency has designated the investigation as nonpublic.

The Food and Drug Administration and several state attorneys general also are investigating Juul's marketing practices. The FDA last October conducted a surprise inspection of Juul's headquarters and collected documents about its marketing. Juul's first marketing campaign in 2015, called "Vaporized," pitched the brand as a cool lifestyle accessory with images of people in their 20s and 30s, which critics say made the brand attractive to teens. Later, as sales of the sleek devices took off in 2017, Juul-related posts exploded on Instagram and Twitter with photos posted by young people using the product. Juul has since shut down its Facebook and Instagram accounts in the U.S. and changed its marketing to feature only adult smokers at least 35 years old who have switched to Juul. It has also voluntarily stopped selling sweet and fruity flavors in bricks-and-mortar stores. "We fully cooperate and are transparent with any government agency or regulator who have interest in our category," a Juul spokesman said. The company says it has never marketed to youth and that its products are intended for adult cigarette smokers.

The company says it supports legislation to raise the minimum purchase age to 21. It also unveiled a plan on Thursday to install an electronic age-verification system at gas stations and convenience stores intended to curb illegal sales to minors.

Microsoft is killing support for the EPUB document format in Edge classic, and it won't be supported in the new, Chromium-based version of Microsoft Edge. Thurrott reports: "Download an .epub app to keep reading," a notification in Edge classic reads when you load an EPUB document. "Microsoft Edge will no longer be supporting [sic] e-books that use the .epub file extension. Visit the Microsoft Store to see our recommended .epub apps." Aside from the contorted grammar and word usage in the notification -- it's "support" not "be supporting," Microsoft -- the linked webpage is a "Reading room" area on the Microsoft Store that includes audiobook apps in addition to e-book apps. So good luck with that.

Microsoft provides a more grammatically correct explanation for the change on its Microsoft Edge support site, which notes that "Microsoft Edge will no longer support e-books that use the .epub file extension." The site also links to the same terrible Microsoft Store area, but adds that "you can expect to see more added over time as we partner with companies like the DAISY Consortium to add additional, accessible apps... These apps are expected to be available in the Microsoft Store after September 2019." Given that, it's likely that EPUB support will disappear in Edge classic sometime after those apps appear in the Store.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is planning to redesign the tablet experience for Windows 10. The software giant has started testing a new design for 2-in-1 convertible PCs that will keep the user interface more similar to the existing desktop design. Currently, Windows 10 throws you into a more tablet-optimized UI that removes task bar icons and puts the Start menu full-screen when a device automatically switches into "tablet mode." Microsoft is now walking back some of those changes, while keeping some touch-optimized elements for 2-in-1 PCs.

In the new tablet experience, the desktop will remain in full view, with the task bar icons visible and increased spacing between them. If enabled, the search box will collapse into an icon, and the touch keyboard will appear when you tap on a text field. File Explorer will also switch to a touch-optimized layout. Microsoft is testing this with Windows Insiders and has marked the design as beta, suggesting it will change and be shaped by feedback. Still, it's hard not to see this as Microsoft walking back from a dedicated tablet experience in Windows 10. These new changes will trigger automatically when you remove a keyboard from a device like a Surface Pro, and Microsoft has confirmed that a dedicated "tablet mode" will remain but you'll have to enable it manually. Microsoft is also testing a cloud download option to reset and restore Windows 10 PCs. "[I]t will allow Windows users to quickly reinstall the OS without needing it to be installed on the local disk or having a recovery USB drive," reports The Verge.

China is intercepting texts from WeChat users living outside of the country, mostly from the U.S. Taiwan, South Korea, and Australia. NPR reports: The popular Chinese messaging app WeChat is Zhou Fengsuo's most reliable communication link to China. That's because he hasn't been back in over two decades. Zhou, a human rights activist, had been a university student in 1989, when the pro-democracy protests broke out in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. After a year in jail and another in political reeducation, he moved to the United States in 1995. But WeChat often malfunctions. Zhou began noticing in January that his chat groups could not read his messages. "I realized this because I was expecting some feedback [on a post] but there was no feedback," Zhou tells NPR at from his home in New Jersey.

As Chinese technology companies expand their footprint outside China, they are also sweeping up vast amounts of data from foreign users. Now, analysts say they know where the missing messages are: Every day, millions of WeChat conversations held inside and outside China are flagged, collected and stored in a database connected to public security agencies in China, according to a Dutch Internet researcher. Zhou is not the only one experiencing recent issues. NPR spoke to three other U.S. citizens who have been blocked from sending messages in WeChat groups or had their accounts frozen earlier this year, despite registering with U.S. phone numbers. This March, [Victor Gevers, co-founder of the nonprofit GDI Foundation, an open-source data security collection] found a Chinese database storing more than 1 billion WeChat conversations, including more than 3.7 billion messages, and tweeted out his findings. Each message had been tagged with a GPS location, and many included users' national identification numbers. Most of the messages were sent inside China, but more than 19 million of them had been sent from people outside the country, mostly from the U.S., Taiwan, South Korea and Australia.

dryriver writes: There are some computer engineers -- working in software or hardware, or both -- who were true pioneers. Steve Wozniak needs no introduction. Neither do Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace or Charles Babbage. Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce started Intel decades ago. John Carmack of Doom is a legend in realtime 3D graphics coding. Aleksey Pajitnov created Tetris. Akihiro Yokoi and Aki Maita invented the Tamagotchi. Jaron Lanier is the father of VR. Palmer Luckey hacked together the first Oculus Rift VR headset in his parent's garage in 2011. To the question: Who in your opinion are the 21st Century "Steve Wozniaks," working in either hardware or software, or both?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Alibaba founder Jack Ma discussed Mars and artificial intelligence in their first joint appearance on Thursday. From a report: The duo chatted for over half an hour about their vision of how technology, especially artificial intelligence, will shape the future. "I'm always amazed by your vision of technology, I'm not a tech guy," Ma said in his first remarks to Musk, before going on to talk about how artificial intelligence was not a threat. Ma described himself as "optimistic" about AI's impact on humanity, adding that people who worry too much about it have what he calls "college smartness." "People like us that are street smart, we're not scared of that." They also went on to talk about space travel, with Ma complimenting Musk on his attempts to journey into Mars via SpaceX while Musk noted China's advancements in that area, as well as how "inadequate" humans were against computers. Ma, known for arguing in favor of a 12-hour workday, also said he sees a future in which people will have to work only 12 hours a week. He said technological advancements would enable people to live longer and work far fewer hours. He added: "Every technology revolution, people start to worry. In the last 200 years, we have worried [that] new technology is going to take away all the jobs," he said. Ma has previously courted controversy with his endorsement of the "996" work practices prevalent in China's tech industry, under which employees are expected to work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.

CEO of Uber, which posted a record $5.2 billion quarterly loss earlier this month, believes the company is on track to reach profitability. In an interview with Bloomberg Thursday [video], Dara Khosrowshahi said the company has "resolved all of the governance conflicts and legal issues." He said: We have a great investor base, we have taken the company public, and the company revenue gross bookings have grown 75% since I joined. We now have a path to profitability, I believe. So while we've had bumps on the road -- and every adventure has bumps on the road -- I like where we are and I especially like the position that we're in now for the next few years.

We want Uber to be available to everybody. And what we're doing now is going into the next step of introducing other transportation choices to Uber, we've always gone with the pool but for example, we're testing buses to bring the price of Uber down to the next level. We're introducing bikes and scooters for personal electric mobility so that essentially any way that you want to get around your city, we're going to be there for you... And if you want food, if you want even local commerce, which I think we will power, Uber Eats and some of the other services will be there for you as well. [...] These are extraordinary opportunities that we're funding, but I do believe that we're going to prove to our investors that we can take on a serial basis, big parts of our business, turn them profitable and use those parts of our business to fund investments in other areas.

The iconic chart of elements has served chemistry well for 150 years. But it's not the only option out there, and scientists are pushing its limits. From a report: The heaviest naturally occurring element on the table is uranium, with the atomic number 92 (because it has 92 protons in its nucleus). But the periodic table contains still more; the heaviest so far is element 118, oganesson, a "super-heavy" element with 118 protons and a half-life of half a millisecond. It was first synthesized in 2002 by Yuri Oganessian and an intercontinental Russian-American team at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, north of Moscow. Starting in 2020, scientists will attempt to synthesize elements 119 and 120, with a newly inaugurated Superheavy Element Factory and an experimental apparatus that is 100 times more sensitive. They hope to reach the "island of stability," a fabled region of the periodic table populated by superheavy elements with greater longevity.

Like Pandora's box, the discovery of superheavy elements presents tricky questions, Dr. Oganessian said. Will these elements behave the way the periodic table predicts? So far, only some deviations in behavior are expected. But as the atomic numbers go up, deviations will increase rapidly, challenging the periodic table's schematic integrity. Will the periodic table hold up? Or as Pekka Pyykko, a computational chemist at the University of Helsinki, put it in the title of a 2016 paper: "Is the Periodic Table All Right ('PT OK')?" Probably, with modifications, he concluded. Dr. Pyykko formulated a periodic table that chemically classifies the elements up to atomic number 172. Dr. Pyykko noted, however, that the probability of finding the heaviest of superheavy elements is less than hitting a golf ball in Tokyo and making a hole-in-one on the top of Mount Fuji. If scientists get lucky, the resulting super-superheavy elements might even have nuclei with exotic shapes, like a doughnut. Further reading: Why the Periodic Table of Elements Is More Important Than Ever.

Uber and Lyft, the two biggest rideshare companies, are telling their drivers they are willing to compromise with a proposal that includes a minimum wage of $21 per hour. From a report: The new proposal comes after days of protests that brought a caravan of rideshare drivers through San Francisco and ended in Sacramento Wednesday. The demonstrating drivers said they are demanding a living wage and pushing for Assembly Bill 5, which would classify rideshare drivers as employees instead of independent contractors. Lyft sent a message to its drivers, asking them to talk their legislators out of the bill, saying it could cause the company to "offload" or layoff hundreds of thousands of drivers. The message from Lyft also told drivers that AB5 could cost customers more money and make them wait longer for a car. In lieu of the legislation, Lyft said it is willing to compromise with drivers, promising they would get paid at least $21 dollars per hour, receive some benefits and also get their voices heard within the company.

Get ready for the iPhone 11 on September 10. Apple today sent invites to reporters for its next big product launch. It plans to introduce its newest devices and services at 10am, at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino. From a report: The iPhone may be a tougher sell this year. Apple isn't expected to change the basic design of the device, making it the first time the iPhone's had the same look for three years in a row. At the same time, rivals are introducing phones with flexible screens and with 5G -- two innovations not found in Apple devices. Many people are looking toward 2020 for big iPhone changes. This year, Apple is expected to introduce three new models, replacing the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR with the rumored iPhone 11, 11 Max/11 Pro and 11R. The devices likely will include better cameras, faster processors and iOS 13. They come at a time of malaise in the smartphone market, with people holding onto their devices longer than before.

Chris Beard announced today his plans to step down as Mozilla Corporation CEO at the end of 2019. Beard joined the web software company in 2004, remaining an employee since then, with the exception of 2013, when he left to become Greylock's "executive-in-residence," while remaining on as an advisor. From a report: Beard was appointed interim CEO for Mozilla in April 2014, coming on as full time chief executive in July of that same year. The company has seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years, after having ceded much of its browser marketshare to the likes of Google and Apple. Firefox has undergone something of a renaissance over the past year, as have the company's security tools. "Today our products, technology and policy efforts are stronger and more resonant in the market than ever, and we have built significant new organizational capabilities and financial strength to fuel our work," Beard said in the blog post. "From our new privacy-forward product strategy to initiatives like the State of the Internet we're ready to seize the tremendous opportunity and challenges ahead to ensure we're doing even more to put people in control of their connected lives and shape the future of the internet for the public good."