An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A MongoDB database was left open on the internet without a password, and by doing so, exposed the personal details and prescription information for more than 78,000 U.S. patients. The database contained information on 391,649 prescriptions for a drug named Vascepa; used for lowering triglycerides (fats) in adults that are on a low-fat and low-cholesterol diet. Additionally, the database also contained the collective information of over 78,000 patients who were prescribed Vascepa in the past. Leaked information included patient data such as full names, addresses, cell phone numbers, and email addresses, but also prescription info such as prescribing doctor, pharmacy information, NPI number (National Provider Identifier), NABP E-Profile Number (National Association of Boards of Pharmacy), and more. According to vpnMentor, the company that left the database open may have violated HIPAA, and may be in line for a hefty fine for failing to encrypt the patient data it had stored on the database server, a HIPAA golden rule," the report adds. "However, Dissent, the administrator of DataBreaches.net, a website dedicated to tracking data breaches and HIPAA violations, told ZDNet that just because a system stores medical information, it doesn't mean it's necessarily covered by HIPAA. Until the database owner is found, no other conclusions can be drawn."

Samsung Electronics' first foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Fold, will launch soon, as "most" issues linked to the screen have been solved, a Samsung Display executive has revealed. From a report: "Most of the display problems have been ironed out, and the Galaxy Fold is ready to hit the market," said Samsung Display Vice President Kim Seong-cheol in his speech at a conference held by industry organization The Korean Information Display Society on June 18 in Seoul. Samsung Display, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, is the main supplier of the folding screen. The Fold was initially scheduled to hit the shelves in April in the US and in May in Korea, but the launch has been delayed after reviewers complained of flickering screens and creases in the middle of the screen made after repeated folds.

Apple on Thursday launched a voluntary recall and replacement program on Thursday for the 15-inch 2015 MacBook Pro with Retina Display, saying that batteries on some of these devices could overheat and "may pose a fire safety risk." From a report: The current generation is not impacted thankfully; if you have a 2016-2018 MacBook Pro you can breathe a sigh of relief. Actually, the only model covered by the recall is the "Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015." If you own that model, don't panic -- it is not all of them. To see if your computer has the faulty battery, you need to enter your serial number on Apple's website.

A bipartisan pair of House lawmakers on Thursday unveiled a compromise bill aimed at thwarting the scourge of robocalls dialing up U.S. consumers, about one month after the Senate adopted its own anti-robocall bill. From a report: House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.) on Thursday announced the legislation, which differs from the Senate's version on some points but seems to have significant overlap. Pallone and Walden's Stopping Bad Robocalls Act would require phone carriers to implement technology to authenticate whether calls are real or spam, and allow carriers to offer call-blocking services. The legislation specifies the carriers should make sure that legal calls, such as those from doctors offices or creditors, are not blocked, while opening the door for the government to broaden its definition of what constitutes a "robocall."

Google's decided to step away from its self-made tablets and focus instead on the laptop form. From a report: To be clear, Google hadn't actually announced any tablet-specific products this year; the last such item that made its way to the market was the Pixel Slate in 2018. But, as I learned today, the company did have two smaller-sized tablets under development -- and earlier this week, it decided to drop all work on those devices and make its roadmap revolve entirely around laptops instead. A couple of clarifying points here: First, none of this has any impact on Pixel phones. Pixel phones and Pixel computers are two different departments, and the roadmap in question is related exclusively to the latter. And second, when Google talks about a "tablet," it means a device that detaches completely from a keyboard base or doesn't even have a physical keyboard in the first place -- not a swiveling two-in-one convertible like the Pixelbook. The Pixelbook, with its attached keyboard and 360-degree hinge, falls under Google's definition of "laptop." Blurred lines, baby. A Google spokesperson directly confirmed all of these details to me.

The founder of online bank Current claims Facebook copied his company's logo for the social network's bid to reinvent the global financial system. From a report: Stuart Sopp, a Wall Street trader turned start-up CEO, told CNBC that he used a San Francisco-based design firm named Character to create his start-up's logo in 2016. That firm also worked on the secretive crypto project that Facebook unveiled this week, according to a LinkedIn post from Ben Pham, creative director for Character. Anthony Harrison, a spokesman for Facebook, declined to comment for this article. Character did not return calls and messages for comment. "This is a funny way to try and create trust in a new global financial system -- by ripping off another fintech firm," Sopp said in a phone interview. "Facebook has all the money and resources in the world. If they truly wanted to make banking more inclusive and fair, they should've come up with their own ideas and branding, like we have."

One of our most powerful tools to fight biological obliteration is CRISPR, a burgeoning gene-editing technology that acts like a molecular blade, slicing DNA apart and allowing us to add and subtract genes at will. It's now being used to combat invasive species, destroy antibiotic-resistance bacteria and, controversially, edit the genes of human embryos. From a report: In fact, it's so exceptional at editing DNA that "de-extinction," the process of bringing extinct species back from the dead, is on the table. Science has already unraveled the DNA code of long-dead species such as the woolly mammoth, the passenger pigeon and Australia's iconic Tasmanian tiger -- and now, pioneering researchers are using CRISPR to remake modern-day descendants in the image of their ancient counterparts. Could we transform an Asian elephant into a woolly mammoth? We are marching toward that reality. "The CRISPR revolution is the whole reason why we've been having these conversations about de-extinction," says Ben Novak, a biologist working on restoring the extinct passenger pigeon.

There are opponents of de-extinction, however. They point to our responsibilities with species already living on the edge of extinction and ensuring we allocate resources to save them. Others are concerned about the ethics of resurrecting ancient beasts and how they might fit into current ecosystems as the planet chokes under the heavy cloud of climate change. In this era, as the planet warms and biodiversity plummets, we're faced with a question. Should we resurrect the dead?

An anonymous reader shares a report: Out of habit, Nancy Carter, a retired federal employee, turned to Google for help one August evening. She ended the night wishing she hadn't. Ms. Carter had pulled into her Falls Church, Va., driveway and saw the garage door was stuck. The 67-year-old searched Google and found the listing of a local repair service she had used before. She phoned in a house call. Google's ubiquitous internet platform shapes what's real and what isn't for more than 2 billion monthly users. Yet Google Maps, triggered by such Google queries as the one Ms. Carter made, is overrun with millions of false business addresses and fake names, according to advertisers, search experts and current and former Google employees.

The ruse lures the unsuspecting to what appear to be Google-suggested local businesses, a costly and dangerous deception. A man arrived at Ms. Carter's home in an unmarked van and said he was a company contractor. He wasn't. After working on the garage door, he asked for $728, nearly twice the cost of previous repairs, Ms. Carter said. He demanded cash or a personal check, but she refused. "I'm at my house by myself with this guy," she said. "He could have knocked me over dead." The repairman had hijacked the name of a legitimate business on Google Maps and listed his own phone number. He returned to Ms. Carter's home again and again, hounding her for payment of a repair so shoddy it had to be redone. Three years later, Google still can't seem to stop the proliferation of fictional business listings and aggressive con artists on its search engine. The scams are profitable for nearly everyone involved, Google included. Consumers and legitimate businesses end up the losers.

Five years ago, Slack officially launched out of the ashes of a failed gaming project. Now the company is worth more than $20 billion. From a report: Slack, the workplace communication tool popular in tech and media circles, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, making it the latest tech unicorn to race to Wall Street this year. But Slack took a more unconventional approach to going public. The company chose to list its existing shares directly on the stock exchange rather than raising money by issuing new shares to be sold to public investors. Slack opened at $38.50 a share on Thursday, a more than 50% increase from its $26 reference price -- not to be confused with an IPO price -- set on the eve of its market debut. At that price, Slack has a market value of roughly $23 billion.

A music industry hit parade including Spotify, Amazon and Universal is moving to stifle an emerging threat to the sector's business model: fake streams [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; an alternative source was not immediately available.] From a report: [...] A growing army of online bots posing as human listeners is distorting the distribution of these revenues, inflating listening figures for certain tracks to earn higher royalty payments and chart placings. A coalition of 21 technology groups, record labels and music publishers on Thursday agreed a "code of best practices", in the first collective push by the biggest players in music to combat stream manipulation. The group, which also includes Warner Music and Sony Music, warned that "industrial-scale" impersonation of users by "troll farms" was distorting perceptions of what music is popular, according to the document seen by the Financial Times, and vowed to thwart such manipulation by weeding out the bots from the music fans.

Dell, HP, Microsoft and Intel have opposed U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal to include laptop computers and tablets among the Chinese goods targeted for tariffs. From a report: Dell, HP and Microsoft, which together account for 52% of the notebooks and detachable tablets sold in the United States, said the proposed tariffs would increase the cost of laptops in the country. The move would hurt consumers and the industry, and would not address the Chinese trade practices that the Trump administration's office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) seeks to remedy, the four companies said in a joint statement posted online. [...] In a separate statement, Microsoft, along with video game makers Nintendo of America and Sony Interactive Entertainment said the tariffs on video game consoles could stifle innovation, hurt consumers and put thousands of jobs at risk.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: In just five years, Slack has grown to have more than 10 million users and has become a verb in the process. "I'll Slack you" is shorthand for sending a message via the workplace chat platform. On Thursday, the company will take that popularity to the New York Stock Exchange, where its shares will be publicly listed for the first time. At a starting price of $26 per share set Wednesday, Slack Technologies would be worth about $16 billion. Instead of having a conventional initial public offering, Slack will enter into the market as a direct listing, which means the shares will simply be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Most firms that pass on an IPO are widely known companies that are in good financial shape. Fortune explains what it means to enter into the market as a direct listing: "Unlike an ordinary IPO, a direct listing means the company doesn't issue any new shares and doesn't raise additional capital. It's primarily a way for company insiders to sell some of their holdings to investors, while bypassing the formidable fees and requirements of using an underwriter."

pacopico writes: There's a very weird trend going on in Silicon Valley right now where tech giants like Apple, Facebook and Twitter are raiding university neuroscience labs. They're hiring people who do pretty esoteric research on animal brains and putting them in their AI divisions. According to this Bloomberg Businessweek story, part of the reason is simply that the scientists tend to be good at dealing with large amounts of data. But the bigger deal is that these researchers specialize in things like auditory and visual function and even brain/machine interfaces and are being tapped to build new products based on the brain.

An anonymous reader shares a report from Motherboard: Brooklyn-based artist Jason Isolini worked as a contractor for Google Maps, capturing 360-images inside businesses and uploading them. Now, instead of capturing true-to-live panorama images, Isolini is uploading surreal collages that subvert the purpose of Google Maps: to be a tool that brings users from their current location to a business. "Since August 2017, Isolini has made 42 'contributions' to the Google Maps landscape and they've accumulated just shy of 200,000 views," the report says. "In some of his earlier works, Isolini inserted collages of photos -- like street signs, monopoly pieces, laundry detergent bottles -- into spaces around Brooklyn."

"More recently, in addition to his memorial at the site of the accident at Mill Avenue and Washington Street [in Temple, Arizona, where a self-driving car developed by Uber struck and killed Elaine Herzberg in March 2018], he's superimposed his work onto 360-degree views of art buildings like the Simon Lee Gallery and inserted a images of abandonment and destruction over the entrance to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. A cigarette, a broken glass screen, USB ports on a slab of stone, leading to nowhere."

The Chromium-powered Edge browser is now available on both Windows 7 and Windows 8 for testing today. The Verge reports: The release comes two months after Chromium Edge first debuted on Windows 10, and a month after it appeared on macOS. Microsoft is releasing the daily Canary builds initially, and plans to support the weekly Dev channel "soon." You can download the installer over at Microsoft's Edge Insider site. "You will find the experience and feature set on previous versions of Windows to be largely the same as on Windows 10, including forthcoming support for Internet Explorer mode for our enterprise customers," explains a Microsoft Edge team blog post. While most features will be the same, dark mode is missing and Microsoft says there is no support for AAD sign-in.

New submitter Falconhell writes: In an ironic turn of events, Boeing wants to skip some physical certification tests and use only simulations. Given their current situation, this seems like a rather controversial move. Boeing is "reducing the scope and duration of certain costly physical tests used to certify the planemaker's new aircraft," Reuters first reported over the weekend. The manufacturer wants to switch to software-based trials for things such as wing load testing, "instead of doing things like bending actual, and highly expensive, components until they snap," adds The Register.

Twitter announced today that it is removing the option to tag precise locations in tweets because most people don't use this feature. It will however continue to be available for photos via Twitter's updated camera. TechCrunch reports: Twitter users can opt out of location-sharing features in its "privacy and safety" menu. If you don't want to share your precise location details, you should continue keeping the feature turned off as it is still available in Twitter's camera. After the precise location-sharing feature for tweets is removed, users who want to share where they are can do so through services like Foursquare.

Two days ago, Egypt's former president, Mohammed Morsi, collapsed in court during a trial and died from a sudden heart attack. Even though Morsi was the first democratically elected Egyptian president, news outlets have scrubbed that information from stories of his demise in what appears to be a government-mandated description sent out to press. The Verge reports: As noted by Mada Masr, a majority of newspapers published the same 42-word story sent to editors as a directive via WhatsApp. In the case of at least one outlet, a news anchor did that a little too well. In the clip below, the anchor can be heard wrapping her report with "sent from a Samsung device."

Morsi was elected in June 2012, though military forcibly removed him about a year later. The former president collapsed on Monday while in the midst of a courtroom hearing. The circumstances of Morsi's death have been called into question by rival regimes, including that of Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was aligned with Morsi during his brief rule due to both men's links to the Muslim Brotherhood. However, human rights groups have cited Morsi's deteriorating health over the years as the probable cause of this death. It's unclear why the current government, led Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, instructed news outlets to scrub Morsi's presidential history.

The makers of Fortnite, one of the most popular video games ever, have been quizzed by member of parliaments in the UK over what measures are taken to protect players of the game. From a report: Epic Games representatives were asked how it ensured users did not spend too much time or money on the game. Legal counsel Canon Pence said this was not something the company currently tracked. This was "extraordinary", said Damian Collins, who chairs the Digital, Culture Media and Sport Committee. "You're the one who has responsibility," he said. The committee hearing was called to examine immersive and addictive technologies. Among the concerns raised by MPs were whether Epic Games did enough to verify the age of players or encourage users to take breaks after long periods of gameplay.

Three former Facebook content moderators agreed to put themselves in legal jeopardy to expose the appalling working conditions they experienced while employed by a vendor for the tech giant, according to a new report by The Verge. From a report: Workers reported a dirty office environment where they often find pubic hair and bodily waste around their desks. Conditions at the Tampa site are so strenuous that workers regularly put their health in danger, several people told The Verge. One worker kept a trash can by her desk to throw up while she was sick since she had already used all her allotted bathroom breaks. Cognizant is not required to offer sick leave in Florida. One man had a heart attack at his desk and died shortly after, The Verge reported, and the site has not yet gotten a defibrillator. Following an earlier report that uncovered shocking working conditions at the vendor's Phoenix facility, The Verge spoke with 12 current and former Cognizant content moderators in Tampa, Florida. Three of those former workers agreed to break their nondisclosure agreements signed as a condition of employment. The Tampa site is Cognizant's lowest-performing site under the Facebook contract in North America with an accuracy score of 92 compared with Facebook's stated target of 98.