An industry group of internet service providers has branded Firefox browser maker Mozilla an "internet villain" for supporting a DNS security standard. From a report: Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA), the trade group for U.K. internet service providers, nominated the browser maker for its proposed effort to roll out the security feature, which they say will allow users to "bypass UK filtering obligations and parental controls, undermining internet safety standards in the U.K." Mozilla said late last year it was planning to test DNS-over-HTTPS to a small number of users.

Whenever you visit a website -- even if it's HTTPS enabled -- the DNS query that converts the web address into an IP address that computers can read is usually unencrypted. The security standard is implemented at the app level, making Mozilla the first browser to use DNS-over-HTTPS. By encrypting the DNS query it also protects the DNS request against man-in-the-middle attacks, which allow attackers to hijack the request and point victims to a malicious page instead. DNS-over-HTTPS also improves performance, making DNS queries -- and the overall browsing experience -- faster. But the ISPA doesn't think DNS-over-HTTPS is compatible with the U.K.'s current website blocking regime.

intensivevocoder writes: One of the consequences of the explosive popularity of the Raspberry Pi is the flourishing of competing ecosystems of single-board computers (SBCs). Aside from the accessibility a $35 price tag offers, the foremost benefit of the Raspberry Pi is the community -- the proliferation of projects and integrations that center around the Raspberry Pi, and the ease-of-use that creates, makes competing products that look better on spec sheets a disappointment when taken out of the box. PINE64 has attempted to head this off by fostering an involved community; the PINE64 website explains their philosophy as "the community gets to actively shape the devices, as well as the social platform, of PINE64 from the ground up. The goal is to deliver ARM64 devices that you really wish to engage with and a platform that you want to be a part of." The first-generation Pinebook was available in an 11.6" or 14" configuration, with a quad-core Allwinner A64, 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC, and 1366x768 display for $99, beating Nicolas Negroponte's OLPC XO-1, a decade after that project sputtered.

PINE64 is differentiating itself by building not just SBCs, but notebooks, tablets, and phones with community input and feedback. Ahead of the release of the Pinebook Pro this summer, a Rockchip RK3399-based ARM laptop with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, 64GB eMMC, and a 14" 1080p display, TechRepublic interviewed PINE64 community manager Lukasz Erecinski about the Pinebook Pro, and the PINE64 community philosophy. An excerpt from the interview: TechRepublic: Why is Pine64 building a device ecosystem of not just SBCs, but also finished devices, like tablets, laptops, and phones?
Lukasz Erecinski: While SBCs are and will remain our bread and butter, there is no denying that our vision for PINE64 has expanded beyond the SBC market. The core aim of our project remains the same however -- to foster a community and bring affordable ARM64 devices to developers and end-users. You have correctly identified that we are building eco-systems; that is to say, we strive for convergence between our SBCs and other ARM64 devices we manufacture. In result, when evaluating future SOCs, we're not only considering if they'll make for good SBCs but also laptops, modules, tablets, etc. As time progresses, you will see more and more of this type of convergence across devices from us. Allwinner A64 and Rockchip RK3399 are two examples of what we strive for: the Pine64-LTS, the SOPine, Pinebook, PineTab and PinePhone all share the Allwinner A64, whilst the RockPro64, Pinebook Pro and SORock (upcoming module akin to the SOPine) use the Rockchip RK3399.

Microsoft is rolling out an update to its Your Phone app on Windows 10 that will allow it to mirror notifications from your Android phone onto your PC. From a report: This makes good on a promise from August 2018 when Microsoft said that notifications would be coming. The core concept of Your Phone hasn't changed. Once you sync an Android phone with the app, you can read and reply to text messages, look at photos in your on-device library, and even drag and drop the files. But once this update hits your machine, the app will get smarter, alerting you to any notification that your paired phone receives.

Australia's consumer watchdog has sued Samsung's Australian unit for allegedly misleading consumers by promoting water-resistant Galaxy smartphones as suitable to use in swimming pools and the surf. From a report: The world's largest smartphone maker did not know or sufficiently test the effects of pool or saltwater exposure on its phones when ads showed them fully submerged, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) lawsuit says. The case is the first filed by a major regulator and could result in multi-million dollar fines. It centers on more than 300 advertisements in which Samsung showed its Galaxy phones being used at the bottom of swimming pools and in the ocean. "The ACCC alleges Samsung's advertisements falsely and misleadingly represented Galaxy phones would be suitable for use in, or for exposure to, all types of water ... when this was not the case," ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement on Thursday. Samsung said it stood by its advertising, complied with Australian law and would defend the case.

schwit1 quotes a report from ZDNet: On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said that Yi-Chi Shih, a part-time Los Angeles resident, attempted to secure semiconductor chips used in US military applications in order to transfer them to Chinese associates. The 64-year-old was subject to a six-week trial in a Los Angeles, California federal court. Prosecutors alleged that Shih, alongside co-defendant Kiet Ahn Mai of Pasadena, California, conspired to gain access to a sensitive system belonging to an unnamed U.S. firm which manufactured semiconductor chips and Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMICs).

The victim company's PC systems were accessed fraudulently after Mai posed as a potential customer, giving Shih the opportunity to obtain custom processors. While the firm in question believed the chips would only be used in the United States, Shih transferred the products to the Chengdu GaStone Technology Company (CGTC), a Chinese firm building an MMIC manufacturing plant. Evidence suggested that Shih managed to "defraud the U.S. company out of its proprietary, export-controlled items, including its design services for MMICs." A sentencing hearing is yet to be scheduled. The range of charges could see Shih face a maximum sentence of 219 years in federal prison, and the judge presiding over the case is also considering the prosecution's request for hundreds of thousands of dollars to be made forfeit.

Three dummy bombs have been accidentally dropped over Florida on July 1st. "The incident is suspected to have happened at around 1:15 p.m. about 54 miles southwest of Moody Air Force Base about a mile-and-a-quarter west of Highway 129 near Suwannee Springs," reports The Epoch Times, citing a media release by the Moody Air force Base in Central Georgia. From the report: "During a routine training mission, an A-10C Thunderbolt II assigned to the 23d Fighter Group suffered a bird strike which caused an inadvertent release of three BDU-33s, a small non-explosive training munition," said the 23rd Wing Public Affairs. Authorities are investigating the incidence and no injuries or damages have been reported. The air force base said the dummy bomb released is a 25-pound training munition used to simulate the M1a-82 500-pound bomb.

"It is approximately 22-and-a-half inches long and is blue in color. Although the training munition is inert, it is equipped with a small pyrotechnic charge and should not be handled," it said. The authorities have cautioned people not to touch the munition if they come across it. "If the training munition is found, do not approach it, take note of the location, leave the area and keep others away," said the 23rd Wing Public Affairs. Anybody who sights the munition or has any information about it can contact the 23d Wing Command Post at (229) 257-3501 or their local authorities.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Bitcoin uses as much energy as the whole of Switzerland, a new online tool from the University of Cambridge shows. The tool makes it easier to see how the crypto-currency network's energy usage compares with other entities. However, one expert argued that it was the crypto-currency's carbon footprint that really mattered. Currently, the tool estimates that Bitcoin is using around seven gigawatts of electricity, equal to 0.21% of the world's supply. That is as much power as would be generated by seven Dungeness nuclear power plants at once. Over the course of a year, this equates to roughly the same power consumption as Switzerland. "The University of Cambridge tool models the economic lifetime of the world's Bitcoin miners," the report adds. "It uses an average electricity price per kilowatt hour ($0.05) and the energy demands of the Bitcoin network. Finally, the model assumes that all the Bitcoin mining machines worldwide are working with various efficiencies."

A study published last month in the scientific journal Joule found that the electricity used for Bitcoin produces about 22 megatons for CO2 annually. That is as much as Kansas City in the U.S.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Broadcom is in advanced talks to buy cybersecurity firm Symantec, according to people familiar with the matter, seeking a further expansion into the more profitable software business. Broadcom could reach an agreement to buy the Mountain View, California-based company within weeks, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn't public. No deal has been finalized and the talks could fall through, the people said. "Broadcom's potential purchase of another asset with $4+ billion in software sales is likely its most ambitious deal yet -- leaderless Symantec has been losing share, even in its core segments," says Bloomberg's technology analyst Anand Srinivasan. "Broadcom CEO Hock Tan will likely need to aggressively cut Symantec costs while keeping sales stable."

The report also adds that if this deal does happen, it "would mark Broadcom's second big bet in software, following its $18 billion takeover last year of CA Technologies."

iOS 13's third developer beta includes a new feature that makes it look like you're staring directly at your front-facing camera during FaceTime calls, even when looking away at the person on your screen. The Verge reports: Normally, video calls tend to make it look like both participants are peering off to one side or the other, since they're looking at the person on their display, rather than directly into the front-facing camera. However, the new "FaceTime Attention Correction" feature appears to use some kind of image manipulation to correct this, and results in realistic-looking fake eye contact between the FaceTime users.

On Twitter, Dave Schukin explains that the effect is being achieved using ARKit, which is used to map a user's face and adjust the positioning of their eyes accordingly. Using the arm from a pair of glasses, Schukin shows how the software is warping the eye area slightly to achieve the effect. The same effect also appears to be present when wearing sunglasses.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Either Microsoft is gearing up for a very odd promotional effort or somebody on the Windows team has hijacked a functioning time machine. Yesterday, the company posted a video boasting an "all-new Windows 1.0" to its social channels. It even went so far as to completely wipe all its previous posts from the Windows Instagram account, so all you'll find is the clip of its logos over the years. The video scrolls from the simplicity of Windows 10 through the pixellated rainbow flag of Windows XP and Windows 95. Whatever the situation is, the stunt is giving Windows' social media managers a chance to load their replies to confused tweets with throwbacks, from Back to the Future gifs to all the jargon that was once the epitome of cool.

D-Link has agreed to a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission in regards to a 2017 lawsuit in which the US government agency accused the Taiwanese hardware maker of misrepresenting the security of its devices and ignoring vulnerability reports. From a report: As part of the settlement, D-Link has promised to implement a new software security program for its routers and Internet-connected cameras. The company has also agreed to subject itself to ten years of biennial security audits from a third-party, independent auditor. The FTC gets to choose the auditor, while D-Link got to decide the certifications the auditor must obtain before allowing it to review its security program.

Google's bet on balloons to deliver cell service soon faces a crucial test amid doubts about the viability of the technology by some potential customers. From a report: The company behind the effort, Loon says its balloons will reach Kenya in the coming weeks for its first commercial trial. The test with Telkom Kenya, the nation's No. 3 carrier, will let mountain villagers buy 4G service at market-rate prices for an undefined period. Kenya's aviation authority said its final approval would be signed this month. Hatched in 2011, Loon aims to bring connectivity to remote parts of the world by floating solar-powered networking gear over areas where cell towers would be too expensive to build.

Its tennis-court-sized helium balloons have demonstrated utility. Over the last three years, Loon successfully let wireless carriers in Peru and Puerto Rico use balloons for free to supplant cell phone towers downed by natural disasters. Kenyan officials are enthusiastic as they try to bring more citizens online. But executives at five other wireless carriers courted by Loon across four continents told Reuters that Loon is not a fit currently, and may never be. Those companies, including Telkom Indonesia, Vodafone New Zealand and French giant Orange, say Loon must demonstrate its technology is reliable, safe and profitable for carriers.

Facebook has had problems loading images, videos, and other data across its apps today, leaving some people unable to load photos in the Facebook News Feed, view stories on Instagram, or send messages in WhatsApp. From a report: Facebook says it is aware of the issues and "working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible." The issues started around 8AM ET and now appear to be clearing up, according to DownDetector, which monitors website and app issues. The errors aren't affecting all images; many pictures on Facebook and Instagram still load, but others are appearing blank. DownDetector has also received reports of people being unable to load messages in Facebook Messenger.

If you have hangups about Amazon and privacy on its smart assistant, Alexa, you're not alone. Even after Amazon sent answers to a US senator who had questions about how the tech giant retains voice data and transcripts, the lawmaker remains concerned about Alexa's privacy practices. From a report: Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in May, demanding answers on Alexa and how long it kept voice recordings and transcripts, as well as what the data gets used for. The letter came after CNET's report that Amazon kept transcripts of interactions with Alexa, even after people deleted the voice recordings. The deadline for answers was June 30, and Amazon's vice president of public policy, Brian Huseman, sent a response on June 28. In the letter, Huseman tells Coons that Amazon keeps transcripts and voice recordings indefinitely, and only removes them if they're manually deleted by users. Huseman also noted that Amazon had an "ongoing effort to ensure those transcripts do not remain in any of Alexa's other storage systems." But there are still records from some conversations with Alexa that Amazon won't delete, even if people remove the audio, the letter revealed.

An anonymous reader writes: Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man, has enabled tens of millions of people -- if not more -- to come online for the first time with his disruptive telecom network. He has changed how many Indians, once thrifty about each megabyte they spent browsing the internet, consume mobile data today. But many of these first time internet users are increasingly struggling with grasping the nuances of the internet -- often ending up trusting everything they see online and, in extreme cases, causing major chaos in the nation. Ambani now wants to help these people understand the ins and outs of the digital world. His telecom network Reliance Jio announced today a literacy program called 'Digital Udaan' for first time internet users in India. The two-and-a-half-year-old telecom network, which has amassed more than 300 million subscribers, said it has partnered with Facebook to create "the largest ever digital literacy program" that will offer audio-visual training in 10 regional languages. As part of the Digital Udaan program, Reliance Jio will hold training sessions to help its users learn about internet safety, and how they should engage with popular services and its devices. The operator said it will hold these sessions each Saturday and also provide training videos and information brochures to users.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has released the software development kit (SDK) for its open-source Shakti processor. Shakti is based on the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture and was funded by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The institute promised that a development board will also be released soon. Tom's Hardware reports: The RISE group at IIT Madras started working on the Shakti project in 2016 with a plan to release a family of six classes of processors, each serving a different market. The group promised that the reference processors will be competitive with commercial offerings in terms of area, performance and power consumption. Now India, like China and the European Union, are showing interest in designing their own processors, rather than relying on ones designed by U.S. manufacturers. With the release of the Shakti SDK, developers can begin to develop applications for the Shakti processors, even before they're commercialized.

In new research published Tuesday, security researchers Chase Dardaman and Jason Wheeler found three security flaws which, when chained together, could be abused to open a front door with a smart lock. TechCrunch reports: Dardaman and Wheeler began looking into the ZipaMicro, a popular smart home hub developed by Croatian firm Zipato, some months ago, but only released their findings once the flaws had been fixed. The researchers found they could extract the hub's private SSH key for "root" -- the user account with the highest level of access -- from the memory card on the device. Anyone with the private key could access a device without needing a password, said Wheeler. They later discovered that the private SSH key was hardcoded in every hub sold to customers -- putting at risk every home with the same hub installed.

Using that private key, the researchers downloaded a file from the device containing scrambled passwords used to access the hub. They found that the smart hub uses a "pass-the-hash" authentication system, which doesn't require knowing the user's plaintext password, only the scrambled version. By taking the scrambled password and passing it to the smart hub, the researchers could trick the device into thinking they were the homeowner. All an attacker had to do was send a command to tell the lock to open or close. With just a few lines of code, the researchers built a script that locked and unlocked a smart lock connected to a vulnerable smart hub.

Ever since Frontier bought Verizon's Texas network in 2016, the company has been charging some customers a $10-per-month router rental fee even if they're using their own router. Rich Son of Texas purchased Verizon's FiOS Quantum Gateway router for $200 in order to avoid monthly rental fees. He said: "[the router] worked well for me until the takeover happened with Frontier and I began getting charged for using my own equipment. I have continued to call Frontier and was repeatedly assured that the fees will be taken off my bill." But that didn't happen. Ars Technica reports: Son filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission; Frontier responded to the complaint but stuck to its position that he has to pay the fee. A voicemail that Frontier left with Son and his wife said the company informed the FCC that "the router monthly charge is an applicable fee, and it will continue to be billed." Another voicemail from Frontier told them they can avoid the monthly rental fees if they purchase a Frontier router.

"We can reimburse you if you purchase a Frontier router. We cannot reimburse you if you have a Verizon router -- we are not Verizon," the voicemail said. "You can choose to use your own router, however you will be still charged the monthly fee... the difference is we do not service the router that you choose to use." "It's $10 today -- but how much will it cost us tomorrow?" Son said. "I'd consider letting it go if their customer service blew me out of the water, but they've been terrible ever since Verizon forced Frontier on us." When contacted by Ars Technica, Frontier said that it refuses to stop charging the Wi-Fi router rental fee even when customers use their own router and claimed it does so in order to cover higher support costs for customers like Son."

A senior search engineer at Google revealed that the company had to tweak its algorithm to combat misinformation after mass shootings. The Guardian reports: "In these last few years, there's been a tragic increase in shootings," Pandu Nayak, who joined the company 14 years ago to work on its search engine, said. "And it turns out that during these shootings, in the fog of events that are unfolding, a lot of misinformation can arise in various ways. "And so to address that we have developed algorithms that recognize that a bad event is taking place and that we should increase our notions of 'authority', increase the weight of 'authority' in our ranking so that we surface high quality content rather than misinformation in this critical time here."

Authority, by Google's definition, means pages that comply with the company's search quality evaluator guidelines, a 166-page document (PDF) that the company distributes to its 16,000 search quality raters. Those employees are responsible for checking tweaks to Google's algorithm to ensure that they give the best results, rating search results on two scales: one that marks whether the searcher's needs are met (if the search is for "Google Jobs," for instance, a maps result showing the location of Google's head office "fails to meet" needs, while the company's career's page "fully meets"), and a second that marks the page's quality, defined over 80 pages of the guidelines with "very high quality MC" (main content), "very high level of E-A-T" (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) and "very positive reputation."

Apple says a "very small number" of MacBook Air models have an issue with the main logic board and can be replaced at no cost to customers. 9to5Mac reports: Apple's memo to repair staff notes that it has identified "an issue" with the main logic board specifically in Retina, 13-inch, 2018 MacBook Air models with certain serial numbers. Apple will be emailing customers with machines with the serial numbers they've identified as being affected, otherwise customers can take their machine to Apple Stores or authorized repair staff to have their devices checked out. Apple's documents list symptoms as issues with "power," but do not elaborate on what problems users are experiencing exactly. A quick search online for problems with the 2018 MacBook Air logic board shows reports back to when the device first launched with some users' machines not able to power on at all. The affected machines will be covered for four years from the original purchase date. Users that think they might be experiencing the issue can take their MBA to Apple Stores or an Apple authorized service provider.