WeWork, the office-sharing, kegger-hosting phenomenon that has redefined the modern workspace, is also raising the bar for how much money a startup can lose and still be considered a buzzy investment. From a report: WeWork's corporate parent, the We Company, which released its IPO documents on Wednesday, loses roughly $5,197 per customer who inhabits its office space per year. That's considerably more than newly public companies like Uber or Beyond Meat are losing on their growing customer bases. WeWork, which says in the offering document that its corporate mission is no less than to "to elevate the world's consciousness," is on track to lose $2.7 billion this year from its operations, up from nearly $1.7 billion last year. The company's revenue in the first six months of the year nearly doubled from last year's first half, to $1.5 billion. The company said its losses rose just 10% from a year ago, but that includes a $470 million non-operating, and likely non-recurring, gain. Exclude that, and losses from the We Company, which says it will trade under the ticker symbol "WE," rose 60%. "If you work at WeWork, drive home with Uber, and then order food by DoorDash, you're engaging with three companies that are projected to lose about $13 billion this year," tweeted Derek Thompson, a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Further reading: WeWork Files For IPO After Losing $1.9 Billion Last Year.

EmagGeek writes: Peter Brannen has an interesting, if humbling take on the anthropocentric view of geology currently held by many scientists and governments, and the staggeringly arrogant assignment to humanity of its own epoch, despite all of human civilization fitting within a time period, on a geologic timescale, equivalent to that of the exposure time on a high speed camera. The idea of the Anthropocene is an interesting thought experiment. For those invested in the stratigraphic arcana of this infinitesimal moment in time, it serves as a useful catalog of our junk. But it can also serve to inflate humanity's legacy on an ever-churning planet that will quickly destroy -- or conceal forever -- even our most awesome creations. The article also ponders what will become of human civilization, and whether there will be any trace of it remaining when the (likely nonhuman) archaeologists of 100 million years from now go looking for new historical discoveries. An interesting read, for sure.

Paige A. Thompson, the hacker accused of breaching US bank Capital One, is also believed to have stolen data from more than 30 other companies, US prosecutors said in new court documents filed today and obtained by ZDNet. From the report: "The government's investigation over the last two weeks has revealed that Thompson's theft of Capital One's data was only one part of her criminal conduct," US officials said in a memorandum for extending Thompson's detention period. "The servers seized from Thompson's bedroom during the search of Thompson's residence, include not only data stolen from Capital One, but also multiple terabytes of data stolen by Thompson from more than 30 other companies, educational institutions, and other entities." US prosecutors said the "data varies significantly in both type and amount," but, based on currently available information, "much of the data appears not to be data containing personal identifying information."

The fingerprints of over 1 million people, as well as facial recognition information, unencrypted usernames and passwords, and personal information of employees, was discovered on a publicly accessible database for a company used by the likes of the UK Metropolitan police, defence contractors and banks, The Guardian reported Wednesday. From the report: Suprema is the security company responsible for the web-based Biostar 2 biometrics lock system that allows centralised control for access to secure facilities like warehouses or office buildings. Biostar 2 uses fingerprints and facial recognition as part of its means of identifying people attempting to gain access to buildings. Last month, Suprema announced its Biostar 2 platform was integrated into another access control system -- AEOS. AEOS is used by 5,700 organisations in 83 countries, including governments, banks and the UK Metropolitan police. The Israeli security researchers Noam Rotem and Ran Locar working with vpnmentor, a service that reviews virtual private network services, have been running a side project to scans ports looking for familiar IP blocks, and then use these blocks to find holes in companies' systems that could potentially lead to data breaches. In a search last week, the researchers found Biostar 2's database was unprotected and mostly unencrypted. They were able to search the database by manipulating the URL search criteria in Elasticsearch to gain access to data.

phalse phace writes: A WSJ investigation appears to have uncovered multiple instances where the African governments in Uganda and Zambia, with the help of Huawei technicians, used Huawei's communications equipment to spy on and censor political opponents and its citizens. From the report, writes phalse phace: Huawei Technologies dominates African markets, where it has sold security tools that governments use for digital surveillance and censorship. But Huawei employees have provided other services, not disclosed publicly. Technicians from the Chinese powerhouse have, in at least two cases, personally helped African governments spy on their political opponents, including intercepting their encrypted communications and social media, and using cell data to track their whereabouts, according to senior security officials working directly with the Huawei employees in these countries.

It should be noted that while the findings "show how Huawei employees have used the company's technology and other companies' products to support the domestic spying of those governments," the investigation didn't turn up evidence of spying by or on behalf of Beijing in Africa. Nor did it find that Huawei executives in China knew of, directed or approved the activities described. It also didn't find that there was something particular about the technology in Huawei's network that made such activities possible. Details of the operations, however, offer evidence that Huawei employees played a direct role in government efforts to intercept the private communications of opponents.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Russian internet group Mail.Ru is in talks with China's Huawei about the possibility of having its software pre-installed on the Chinese tech giant's devices, Mail.Ru told Reuters. Mail.Ru owns Russian social networks Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. It is developing several messenger services and has an email and browser service.

SoftBank-backed startup offers 'human-assisted' artificial-intelligence; current, former employees say company inflates its tech expertise. WSJ reports: Startup Engineer.ai says it uses artificial-intelligence technology to largely automate the development of mobile apps, but several current and former employees say the company exaggerates its AI capabilities to attract customers and investors. The competing claims reflect a growing challenge in the tech world of assessing a company's proficiency in artificial intelligence, which refers to technologies that can allow computers to learn or perform tasks typically requiring human decision makers -- in many cases helping companies save money or better target consumers. Because AI technology is complex and loosely defined, nonexperts can find it hard to discern when it is being deployed. Still, money is flowing into the sector, and many startups can say they use AI as a way to lure investments or corporate clients even when such claims are difficult to vet.

London and Los Angeles-based Engineer.ai raised $29.5 million last year from investors including Deepcore, a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank. Other backers include Zurich-based venture-capital firm Lakestar -- an early investor in Facebook and Airbnb -- and Singapore-based Jungle Ventures. Engineer.ai was spun out of an earlier company in 2016, the company has said. When announcing its funding last year, it said it had notched $24 million in revenue while self-funding its operations. Engineer.ai says its "human-assisted AI" allows anyone to create a mobile app by clicking through a menu on its website. Users can then choose existing apps similar to their idea, such as Uber's or Facebook's. Then Engineer.ai creates the app largely automatically, it says, making the process cheaper and quicker than conventional app development.

[...] Documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and several people familiar with the company's operations, including current and former staff, suggest Engineer.ai doesn't use AI to assemble code for apps as it claims. They indicated that the company relies on human engineers in India and elsewhere to do most of that work, and that its AI claims are inflated even in light of the fake-it-'til-you-make-it mentality common among tech startups.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have announced they've signed a contract with Cray Computing for the NNSA's first exascale supercomputer, "El Capitan." El Capitan's job will be to will perform essential functions for the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which supports U.S. national security missions in ensuring the safety, security and effectiveness of the nation's nuclear stockpile in the absence of underground testing. Developed as part of the second phase of the Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne and Livermore (CORAL-2) procurement, the computer will be used to make critical assessments necessary for addressing evolving threats to national security and other issues such as non-proliferation and nuclear counterterrorism.

El Capitan will have a peak performance of more than 1.5 exaflops -- which is 1.5 quintillion calculations per second. It'll run applications 50 times faster than Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) Sequoia system and 10 times faster than its Sierra system, which is currently the world's second most powerful super computer. It'll be four times more energy efficient than Sierra, too. The $600 million El Capitan is expected to go into production by late 2023. "NNSA is modernizing the Nuclear Security Enterprise to face 21st century threats," said Lisa E Gordon-Hagerty, DOE undersecretary for nuclear security and NNSA administrator. "El Capitan will allow us to be more responsive, innovative and forward-thinking when it comes to maintaining a nuclear deterrent that is second-to-none in a rapidly-evolving threat environment."

The FBI is planning to aggressively harvest information from Facebook and Twitter. Citing the The Wall Street Journal, ZDNet reports that the FBI "has recently sought proposals from third-party vendors for technological solutions able to harvest publicly-available information in bulk from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets." From the report: The law enforcement agency says the data collected will be used "to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests." Law enforcement has requested the means to "obtain the full social media profile of persons-of-interest and their affiliation to any organization or groups," to keep track of users based on their neighborhood, and keyword searches, among other tool functions. Vendors have until August 27 to submit their proposals. While the FBI believes that such tools can work in harmony with privacy safeguards and civil liberties, the mass collection of names, photos, and IDs -- when combined with information from other sources -- may do just the opposite.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has banned select MacBook Pro laptops on flights after Apple recently said that some units had batteries that posed a fire risk. In a statement, the FAA said it was "aware of the recalled batteries that are used in some Apple MacBook Pro laptops" and stated that it alerted major U.S. airlines about the recall. Bloomberg reports: The watchdog also reminded airlines to follow 2016 safety instructions for goods with recalled batteries, which means that the affected Apple laptops should not be taken on flights as cargo or in carry-on baggage by passengers. The Apple laptops in question are some 15-inch MacBook Pros sold between September 2015 and February 2017. Apple issued the recall in June, saying it had "determined that, in a limited number of older generation 15-inch MacBook Pro units, the battery may overheat and pose a fire safety risk."

This week, four airlines with cargo operations managed by Total Cargo Expertise -- TUI Group Airlines, Thomas Cook Airlines, Air Italy, and Air Transat -- implemented a ban, barring the laptops from being brought onto the carriers' planes as cargo, according to an internal notice obtained by Bloomberg News. A spokesperson for TUI Group Airlines said airport staff and flight attendants will start making announcements about these MacBook Pros at the gate and before takeoff. Laptops that have replaced batteries won't be impacted, the spokesperson said. The company also posted a notice on its website banning the recalled computers on board, in both cargo and passenger areas of its planes. It's unclear what efforts will, if any, be made at U.S. airports.

Domino's is planning to become more competitive with on-demand apps like DoorDash, GrubHub and UberEats by delivering pizzas with custom electric bikes. According to TechCrunch, the pizza company has partnered with Rad Power Bikes to deploy hundreds of e-bikes across corporate-owned stores later this year in Baltimore, Houston, Miami and Salt Lake City. From the report: The e-bikes supplied by Rad Power Bikes are equipped with small integrated motors to assist with pedaling, and can run for 25 to 40 miles, depending on the user, before needing a recharge, according to the company. The bikes are equipped with lights in the front and back, reflective materials for driver safety and have a top assisted speed of 20 miles per hour. Importantly, the e-bikes have been customized to hold pizza, drinks and sides. One e-bike can hold up to 12 large pizzas. The company tested the e-bikes and discovered that service and delivery times improved, Tom Curtis, Domino's executive vice president of corporate operations, said in the announcement. The e-bikes also opened up the labor pool for the company, allowing it to tap into candidates who might not have a car or driver's license. Some franchisee owners were already using e-bikes and found they are essential in hilly urban areas.

A researcher known as MG has modified Lightning cables with extra components to let him remotely connect to the computers that the cables are connected to. "It looks like a legitimate cable and works just like one. Not even your computer will notice a difference. Until I, as an attacker, wirelessly take control of the cable," MG said. Motherboard reports: One idea is to take this malicious tool, dubbed O.MG Cable, and swap it for a target's legitimate one. MG suggested you may even give the malicious version as a gift to the target -- the cables even come with some of the correct little pieces of packaging holding them together. MG typed in the IP address of the fake cable on his own phone's browser, and was presented with a list of options, such as opening a terminal on my Mac. From here, a hacker can run all sorts of tools on the victim's computer.

The cable comes with various payloads, or scripts and commands that an attacker can run on the victim's machine. A hacker can also remotely "kill" the USB implant, hopefully hiding some evidence of its use or existence. MG made the cables by hand, painstakingly modifying real Apple cables to include the implant. "In the end, I was able to create 100 percent of the implant in my kitchen and then integrate it into a cable. And these prototypes at Def con were mostly done the same way," he said. MG did point to other researchers who worked on the implant and graphical user interface. He is selling the cables for $200 each.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The Russian authorities on Tuesday announced the evacuation of the village nearest to the site of a nuclear accident in northern Russia, suggesting dangers more grave than initially reported. The still-mysterious episode last week killed seven people and released radiation, apparently when a small nuclear reactor malfunctioned during a test of a novel type of missile near a naval weapons testing site. Russian officials have released a flurry of misleading or incomplete statements playing down the severity of the accident, which the military first reported on Thursday as a fire involving a liquid-fueled rocket engine. It was not until Sunday that Russian scientists conceded that a reactor had released radiation during a test on an offshore platform in the White Sea. That pattern of murkiness continued on Tuesday, as news reports and official statements offered only the vaguest explanation for the evacuation, and hours later seemed to indicate that it had been called off.

Nearly four years ago, a lone bankruptcy lawyer sued Square, the payment processor run by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, challenging the app's terms of use -- despite never signing up. As of yesterday, the case will proceed, thanks to an opinion issued by the California Supreme Court that could have wide-reaching implications for online businesses. Gizmodo reports: The first thing you need to know is that, for whatever reason, Square's Prohibited Goods and Services policies include "bankruptcy attorneys or collection agencies," which you'll recall is plaintiff Robert White's line of work. California, where this case was tried and where a plurality of online services are headquartered, is also home to a state law -- the Unruh Civil Rights Act -- which provides broad protections against discrimination of many kinds, including occupation. But the question remained as to whether White needed to have entered into an agreement with Square (by agreeing to the terms of service) in order to have experienced said discrimination barring his "full and equal access" to the service. For the time being at least: no.

"In general, a person suffers discrimination under the Act when the person presents himself or herself to a business with an intent to use its services but encounters an exclusionary policy or practice that prevents him or her from using those services," Justice Goodwin Liu wrote in court's unanimous opinion. "We conclude that this rule applies to online businesses and that visiting a website with intent to use its services is, for purposes of standing, equivalent to presenting oneself for services at a brick-and-mortar store." The Supreme Court noted that the merits of White's case -- beyond his having standing -- were outside its purview, and that "mere awareness of a business's discriminatory policy or practice is not enough for standing under the Act," but that "entering into an agreement with the business is not required."

The ACLU tested Rekognition, Amazon's facial recognition technology, on photographs of California lawmakers. It matched 26 of them to mugshots. From a report: In a recent test of Amazon's facial recognition software, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California revealed that it mistook 26 California lawmakers as people arrested for crimes. The ACLU used Rekognition, Amazon's facial recognition software, to evaluate 120 photos of lawmakers against a database of 25,000 arrest photos, ACLU attorney Matt Cagle said at a press conference on Tuesday. One in five lawmaker photographs were falsely matched to mugshots, exposing the frailties of an emerging technology widely adopted by law enforcement. The ACLU used the default Rekognition settings, which match identity at 80 percent confidence, Cagle said. Assembly member Phil Ting was among those whose picture was falsely matched to an arrest photo. He's also an active advocate for limiting facial recognition technology: in February, he introduced a bill, co-sponsored by the ACLU, that bans the use of facial recognition and other biometric surveillance on police-worn body cameras.

CTF, a little-known Microsoft protocol used by all Windows operating system versions since Windows XP, is insecure and can be exploited with ease. From a report: According to Tavis Ormandy, a security researcher with Google's Project Zero elite security team and the one who discovered the buggy protocol, hackers or malware that already have a foothold on a user's computer can use the protocol to take over any app, high-privileged applications, or the entire OS, as a whole. Currently, there are no patches for these bugs, and a quick fix isn't expected, as the vulnerabilities are deeply ingrained in the protocol and its design.

What CTF stands is currently unknown. Even Ormandy, a well-known security researcher, wasn't able to find what it means in all of Microsoft documentation. What Ormandy found out was that CTF is part of of the Windows Text Services Framework (TSF), the system that manages the text shown inside Windows and Windows applications. When users start an app, Windows also starts a CTF client for that app. The CTF client receives instructions from a CTF server about the OS system language and the keyboard input methods. It is unclear how Microsoft will patch the CTF problem.

Facebook has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the work. From the report: The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained -- only to transcribe it, said the people, who requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. They're hearing Facebook users' conversations, sometimes with vulgar content, but do not know why Facebook needs them transcribed, the people said. Facebook confirmed that it had been transcribing users' audio and said it will no longer do so, following scrutiny into other companies.

"Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago," the company said Tuesday. The company said the users who were affected chose the option in Facebook's Messenger app to have their voice chats transcribed. The contractors were checking whether Facebook's artificial intelligence correctly interpreted the messages, which were anonymized. [...] The social networking giant, which just completed a $5 billion settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission after a probe of its privacy practices, has long denied that it collects audio from users to inform ads or help determine what people see in their news feeds.

Viacom and CBS have struck a deal for a merger on Tuesday with an agreement to recombine in the latest entertainment industry mega-deal. From a report: As expected, Viacom CEO Bob Bakish will lead the combined company as CEO, while CBS acting CEO Joe Ianniello will also remain in a top executive position that will have him oversee CBS-branded assets. CBS CFO Christina Spade will serve as CFO of the merged firm. Shari Redstone, vice chair of both companies, will serve as chair of the combined company. The companies had previously agreed on the management setup and the composition of the board of the merged company, with the stock exchange ratio for the deal being the final haggling point that was finally resolved early in the week. The boards of both companies have approved the deal.

Consolidation to gain more scale amid competition from streaming video and technology giants has been a key focus for the entertainment sector in recent years. The CBS-Viacom deal agreement comes after Walt Disney's $71.3 billion acquisition of large parts of 21st Century Fox and AT&T's $85 billion takeover of Time Warner. CBS is also understood to have offered Lionsgate $5 billion to buy its premium TV unit Starz.

YouTube is experimenting with making video thumbnails much larger on its homepage, according to several screenshots that appeared on Twitter and Reddit this morning. From a report: The new homepage design changes quite a bit about the current setup. Videos are no longer grouped by categories, fewer videos appear in a line for people to scroll through, and, yes, the thumbnails are noticeably larger. It's unclear just how many people have been served the new layout. So far, it's not going over well with users. People are complaining that the bigger thumbnails make the homepage more difficult to scroll through.

Americans would rather endure such vacation travesties as lost luggage or food poisoning, rather than go without internet while on vacation. Almost half of respondents (49 percent) in a study commissioned by Roku said that no internet access would qualify as a vacation disaster.