Federal workers and the public in general might be mistaken about the security of .zip files, Sen. Ron Wyden said on Wednesday [PDF], and he's asking the National Institute of Standards and Technology to issue guidance on the best way to send sensitive files over the internet. Wyden wrote: Government agencies routinely share and receive sensitive data through insecure methods -- such as emailing .zip files -- because employees are not provided the tools and training to do so safely. As you know, it is a routine practice in the government, and indeed the private sector, to send by email-protected .zip files containing sensitive documents. Many people incorrectly believe that password-protected .zip files can protect sensitive data.

Indeed, many password-protected .zip files can be easily broken with off-the-shelf hacking tools. This is because many of the software programs that create .zip files use a weak encryption algorithm by default. While secure methods to protect and share data exist and are freely available, many people do not know which software they should use. Given the ongoing threat of cyber attacks by foreign state actors and high-profile data breaches, this is a potentially catastrophic national security problem that needs to be fixed. The government must ensure that federal workers have the tools and training they need to safetly share sensitive data. To address this problem, I ask that NIST create and publish an easy-to-understand guide describing the best way for individuals and organizations to securely share sensitive data over the internet.

The U.S. government is in the late stages of an investigation into YouTube for its handling of children's videos, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing four people familiar with the matter, a probe that threatens the company with a potential fine and already has prompted the tech giant to reevaluate some of its business practices. From the report: The Federal Trade Commission launched the investigation after numerous complaints from consumer groups and privacy advocates, according to the four people, who requested anonymity because such probes are supposed to be confidential. The complaints contended that YouTube, which is owned by Google, failed to protect kids who used the streaming-video service and improperly collected their data. As the investigation has progressed, YouTube executives in recent months have accelerated internal discussions about broad changes to how the platform handles children's videos, according to a person familiar with the company's plans. That includes potential changes to its algorithm for recommending and queuing up videos for users, including kids, part of an ongoing effort at YouTube over the past year and a half to overhaul its software and policies to prevent abuse.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Facebook unveiled its audacious Libra cryptocurrency and Calibra digital wallet on Tuesday through which it plans to transform financial services across the globe. The social juggernaut made clear of its ambitions when it said that it wishes to empower more than 1.7 billion people around the world who currently do not have a bank account. But potentially an equally large group of people would not be able to use Facebook's new digital payments service when it begins rollout next year.

Responding to queries from TechCrunch, a Calibra spokesperson said that the digital wallet will not be rolling out to a number of markets that have taken a stand against cryptocurrency, or are sanctioned by the United States. "The Libra Blockchain will be global, but it will be up to custodial wallet providers to determine where they will and will not operate. Calibra won't be available in US-sanctioned countries or countries that ban cryptocurrencies," the spokesperson told TechCrunch. TechCrunch understands that India, Facebook's biggest market, is among the list of countries where Calibra does not intend to launch. Additionally, Calibra isn't going to be available in China, North Korea, and Iran, too, where Facebook does not currently have a presence. Further reading: Proposed Law in India Would Imprison Anyone Who Uses Cryptocurrency.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over 70 million records were stolen or leaked from poorly configured databases last year, making privacy a top concern. That's no doubt one motivation behind Google's open-sourcing this morning of Private Join and Compute, a new secure multi-party computation (MPC) tool designed to help organizations work together with confidential data sets. "We continually invest in new research to advance innovations that preserve individual privacy while enabling valuable insights from data," wrote engineering director Sarvar Patel and research scientist Moti Yung in a blog post. "Many important research, business, and social questions can be answered by combining data sets from independent parties, where each party holds their own information about a set of shared identifiers, some of which are common."

At its core, Private Join and Compute lets organizations gain aggregated insights about the other party's data. They're able to encrypt identifiers and associated data, join them, and then perform calculations on the overlapping corpora to draw useful information. All identifiers and their associated data remain fully encrypted and unreadable throughout the process. While neither party is forced to reveal their raw data, they can answer questions at hand using outputs of the computation -- for instance, counts, sums, and averages. Private Join and Compute achieves this with two cryptographic privacy methods devised to protect sensitive data: Private set intersection and homomorphic encryption.

Apple is counting on apps built for the iPad and the iPhone being converted to the Mac as a way to infuse new energy -- and a lot of new software -- into the granddaddy of its devices. From a report: The party started last year at WWDC 2018 when Apple announced a "sneak peek" at four of its own apps that it converted from iOS to MacOS. Those four were News, Voice Memos, Home and Stocks. But when the apps showed up in MacOS Mojave, they weren't greeted with much enthusiasm from Mac users because all four were rudimentary at best and didn't take advantage of the Mac's extra capabilities. Good news. Apple is fixing them. At WWDC 2019 earlier this month, Apple announced Project Catalyst, which streamlines the process for all software makers to bring their own iOS apps to Mac.

In an interview with CNET at WWDC, Apple software chief Craig Federighi confirmed that the four iOS apps for Mac released last year will get major updates based on the new technology in Project Catalyst. But he also revealed that the apps will get new designs to make them more Mac-like. "They're getting improvements," Federighi said. "The underlying technology has matured...Some of that is super low-level stuff. Some people have dissected those apps and realized that they were sort of two halves: an AppKit half and a UIKit half, literally running in different processes. That's all unified now. This has become much more of a native Mac framework...So automatically, the apps we built last year are upgraded."

Internet security provider Cloudflare is introducing the Ethereum Gateway to its Distributed Web Gateway toolbox enabling users to interact with the Ethereum network without installing any software. From a report: This is part of Cloudflare's Distributed Web Gateway project to expand the decentralized web ecosystem and enhance its reliability, speed, and ease of use. Instead of downloading and cryptographically verifying hundreds of gigabytes of data -- an impossible task for low-power devices and those with low technical barriers to entry -- the gateway enables any device with web access to interact with the Ethereum network. This setup will make it possible to explore the blockchain and add interactive elements to sites powered by Ethereum smart contracts. In fact, the gateway gives people the ability to put new contracts on Ethereum with having to run a node, because Cloudflare will take a signed transaction and push it to the network thereby allowing miners to cryprographicaly add it. Despite the value Cloudflare brings to gateway clients, the service is completely free. Nick Sullivan, Cloudflare's Head of Cryptography, explains that the program "leverages the existing Cloudflare network, which already provides a number of free services."

YouTube is considering far-reaching changes to its platform in the wake of a string of incidents that put the video-streaming powerhouse on the defensive. From a report: Executives at the Google unit are debating moving all children's content into a separate product, the stand-alone YouTube Kids app, to better protect young viewers from objectionable videos, say people briefed on the discussions. That would be a seismic and risky switch, as children's videos are among the most popular on the platform and carry millions of dollars in advertising.

Some YouTube employees are pushing for another major modification. They are encouraging the company to switch off for children's programming a feature that automatically plays a new video after one has been completed, according to the people briefed. While that default setting -- known as YouTube's recommendation system -- has helped boost audience hours to new heights, it has also opened the company up to criticism that kids and parents can select innocuous videos only to be automatically transitioned into inappropriate fare. [...] The possible changes, though still under discussion and not considered imminent, would be among the biggest ever for the platform, not least because they would require alterations to YouTube's infrastructure and significant negotiations over the boundaries of children's content.

At a convention on digital currency, rarely does an audience Q&A session include a question as incendiary as, "Why is this fraud allowed to speak at this conference?" But that's how a discussion about Bitcoin ended up last year in Seoul. From a report: The supposed fraud is Craig Wright, an Australian-born technologist who gained notoriety three years ago when he declared himself the inventor of Bitcoin. The provocateur is Vitalik Buterin, a baby-faced Russian-Canadian programmer who helped create another popular digital currency called Ether. No one disputes Buterin's role in Ether; many reject Wright's claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious genius behind Bitcoin.

Wright is a comic-book supervillain for some in the world of cryptocurrency. Buterin's rant was applauded by a handful of people at the conference, including one of the panelists and a man on the sidelines wearing a vest and metallic fiber shirt. It had the feel of an impromptu live performance of a Twitter flame war. The whole thing lasted 90 seconds. Footage recorded from the crowd provided an amusing YouTube video and sparked a fresh round of tweets mocking Wright. That appeared to be that, until a year later when Buterin received a letter from Wright's attorney. The legal notice, dated April 12, said Wright intends to sue Buterin in the U.K. for defamation. Less than a week later, Wright filed suit with similar claims against a podcaster named Peter McCormack, seeking 100,000 pounds ($129,000) in damages. And on May 2, Wright's lawyers served Roger Ver, an early Bitcoin investor, at a cryptocurrency meet-up in London.

Amazon announced this morning the expansion of its own air delivery network, Amazon Air. "The retailer says it's leasing an additional 15 Boeing 737-800 cargo aircraft from partner GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS)," reports TechCrunch. "These will join the five Boeing 737-800's already leased from GECAS, announced earlier this year. The aircraft will fly out of more than 20 U.S. air gateways in the Amazon Air network." From the report: In addition, Amazon says it will open more air facilities in 2019, including at Fort Worth Alliance Airport, Wilmington Air Park and Chicago Rockford International Airport. Meanwhile, the main Air Hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport will open in 2021. The Amazon Air network, then called Prime Air, was first launched in 2016, with the goal of speeding up Amazon's e-commerce deliveries, particularly for its Prime members. But over the years, the competition with partners-slash-rivals like FedEx have heated up -- and not only on air cargo, but also in newer areas like ground delivery robots and drones.

At the end of last year, Amazon announced more aircraft additions for Amazon Air, bumping the network from 40 planes to 50. Today, it says it's on track to reach 70 planes by 2021, thanks to this new expansion. The company also claims to have created thousands of U.S. jobs thanks to Amazon's investment of millions into its air network.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The Irish government plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, as part of a major strategy to protect the environment. The aim is to ensure that all new cars and vans on Irish roads in 11 years' time are electric vehicles. The proposed legislation was among 180 measures in the government's Climate Action Plan, published on Monday. The document also includes a target to implement an EU-wide ban on non-recyclable plastic by 2030.

Unveiling the plan on Monday, the Environment Minister Richard Bruton said Ireland was "currently 85% dependent on fossil fuels." Mr Bruton said the plan was a roadmap to achieving existing 2030 emissions targets and would put Ireland "on a trajectory to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050." The hope is that by the time the petrol and diesel vehicle ban is introduced in 2030 there will be 950,000 electric vehicles on Irish roads. The government is set to invest in a "nationwide" charging network to power the new vehicles. By 2025, at least one recharging point will be required at new non-residential buildings with more than 10 parking spaces. The government also said it would stop granting National Car Test (NCT) certificates to fossil fuel cars by 2045. "The compulsory inspection program is carried out every year on vehicles that are more than 10 years old," reports the BBC.

Magic Leap, a secretive U.S. startup that makes a $2,295 augmented-reality headset, filed a lawsuit Monday accusing one of its former engineers of stealing its technology to create his own AR device for China. Bloomberg reports: In a lawsuit filed Monday, Magic Leap alleges that Chi Xu, who left in 2016, exploited its confidential information to "quickly develop a prototype of lightweight, ergonomically designed, mixed reality glasses for use with smart phones and other devices that are strikingly similar" to the Florida-based startup's designs. The lawsuit marks the latest accusation from an American firm of intellectual property theft by Chinese companies, a perennial sore point that's helped escalate tensions between the world's two largest economies. With more than $2 billion in financing, Magic Leap is one of the better-funded startups delving into so-called augmented or mixed reality, a technology that gives users the illusion that fantastical, three-dimensional digital objects exist in the physical world.

Xu, who founded Beijing-based Hangzhou Tairuo Technology Co., also known as Nreal, unveiled his own augmented reality glasses at a major Las Vegas trade show in January, touting them as lighter than the Magic Leap One, Forbes has reported. Magic Leap released its headset last August after seven years of secretive work and more than $2 billion of investment. The startup alleges that Xu plotted during his roughly 13 months working there to launch his own competing company in China and "neglected his work duties" to acquire proprietary information. Xu is accused in the suit of breach of contract, fraud and unfair competition.

Earlier today, Facebook announced its cryptocurrency "Libra" and the nonprofit association that will oversee it. "But behind Facebook's ambitions to create a quasi-nation state ruled by mostly corporate interests is a secret weapon, one the company hopes it can use to create another platform used by billions of people -- and generate enormous new revenue streams along the way," reports The Verge. "It's called Calibra, and it's a new subsidiary of Facebook the company is launching to build financial services and software on top of the Libra blockchain." From the report: At first blush, Calibra resembles a fairly standard payments company -- but its tight integration with Facebook's enormous user base could give it a significant advantage over any rivals. Thanks to its proximity to the technical development of Libra, and its ability to leverage WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, Calibra could very well become Facebook's next big thing. Calibra's immediate goal is to develop and launch its own digital cryptocurrency wallet, and integrate that wallet into other Facebook products. The company will become a member of the nonprofit Libra Association and have equal voting power the other partners as Facebook's official representative, which include Uber, Lyft, eBay, and PayPal, along with several other tech companies, financial service providers, venture capitalists, and fellow nonprofits. That way, Facebook can say it does not solely control the currency or the network by itself. It also gets the benefit of having twice the representation as other companies, at least for now.

Libra is the technology that underpins the network. But when it launches, Calibra will likely be how most people interact with the currency until competing wallets arise. In fact, it will likely be the first cryptocurrency wallet that hundreds of millions of people will have access to, by nature of being bundled with Facebook's massive ecosystem. With billions of users potentially interacting with Calibra, it will instantaneously have many hundreds of times the user base of the world's most popular existing wallets from Coinbase and others. Kevin Weil, vice president of product at Calibra, says the primary business model isn't to make money off ads targeted using your purchase history or to charge people for using the Calibra app. The real goal, Weil says, is to boost adoption to the point where Libra can have a vibrant financial services economy built on top of it, not just by Facebook but by any other company in the world.

Weil says Libra becoming successful will have all sorts of positive ripple effects for all participants. "You suddenly have billions of new consumers for any online service. Businesses today that operate in cash only, if they have access to a digital currency they have access to advertising platforms, including Facebook," he says. "There are meaningful side effects on Facebook's business if Libra is successful."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Researchers in Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) this week showed they could boost the efficiency of their solar-powered desalination system by more than 50% simply by adding inexpensive plastic lenses to concentrate sunlight into "hot spots." The results are available online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The typical way to boost performance in solar-driven systems is to add solar concentrators and bring in more light," said Pratiksha Dongare, a graduate student in applied physics at Rice's Brown School of Engineering and co-lead author of the paper. "The big difference here is that we're using the same amount of light. We've shown it's possible to inexpensively redistribute that power and dramatically increase the rate of purified water production."

In conventional membrane distillation, hot, salty water is flowed across one side of a sheetlike membrane while cool, filtered water flows across the other. The temperature difference creates a difference in vapor pressure that drives water vapor from the heated side through the membrane toward the cooler, lower-pressure side. Scaling up the technology is difficult because the temperature difference across the membrane -- and the resulting output of clean water -- decreases as the size of the membrane increases. Rice's "nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation" (NESMD) technology addresses this by using light-absorbing nanoparticles to turn the membrane itself into a solar-driven heating element. Dongare and colleagues, including study co-lead author Alessandro Alabastri, coat the top layer of their membranes with low-cost, commercially available nanoparticles that are designed to convert more than 80% of sunlight energy into heat. The solar-driven nanoparticle heating reduces production costs, and Rice engineers are working to scale up the technology for applications in remote areas that have no access to electricity.

Two House lawmakers are pushing an amendment that would effectively defund a massive data collection program run by the National Security Agency unless the government promises to not intentionally collect data of Americans. TechCrunch reports: The bipartisan amendment -- just 15 lines in length -- would compel the government to not knowingly collect communications -- like emails, messages and browsing data -- on Americans without a warrant. Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI, 3rd) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA, 19th) have already garnered the support from some of the largest civil liberties and rights groups, including the ACLU, the EFF, FreedomWorks, New America and the Sunlight Foundation.

Under the current statute, the NSA can use its Section 702 powers to collect and store the communications of foreign targets located outside the U.S. by tapping into the fiber cables owned and run by U.S. telecom giants. But this massive data collection effort also inadvertently vacuums up Americans' data, who are typically protected from unwarranted searches under the Fourth Amendment. The government has consistently denied to release the number of how many Americans are caught up in the NSA's data collection. For the 2018 calendar year, the government said it made more than 9,600 warrantless searches of Americans' communications, up 28% year-over-year.

Over the weekend, Google Search was caught allegedly copying song lyrics from Genius.com. In response, Google published a long explanation of how lyrics in Search work and said that they will add attribution to note which third-party service is supplying the lyrics. 9to5Google reports: When you look up a song in Search, Google often returns a YouTube video with the Knowledge Panel featuring lyrics, links to streaming services, and other artist/album/release/genre info. A query that explicitly asks for "lyrics" will display the full text as the first item at the top of Google.com. The Wall Street Journal over the weekend reported on an accusation that Search was taking content from Genius. According to Google today, it does "not crawl or scrape websites to source these lyrics." When available, Google will pay music publishers for the right to display lyrics. However, in most cases, publishers do not have digital transcripts, with the search engine instead turning to third-party "lyrics content providers."

Google today reiterated that it's asking partners to "investigate the issue," with the third-party -- and not Google directly -- likely at fault for scraping Genius content. Meanwhile, Knowledge Panels in Search will soon gain attribution to note who is supplying digital lyrics text. "Google today reiterated that it's asking partners to 'investigate the issue,' with the third-party -- and not Google directly -- likely at fault for scraping Genius content," Google said in a blog post. "Meanwhile, Knowledge Panels in Search will soon gain attribution to note who is supplying digital lyrics text."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Simone Giertz was tired of waiting for Elon Musk to unveil his new Tesla pickup truck, so she decided to make one herself. The popular YouTuber and self-described "queen of shitty robots" transformed a Model 3 into an honest-to-god pickup truck, which she dubs "Truckla" -- and naturally you can watch all the cutting and welding (and cursing) on her YouTube channel. There's even a fake truck commercial to go along with it. Giertz spent over a year planning and designing before launching into the arduous task of turning her Model 3 into a pickup truck. And she recruited a ragtag team of mechanics and DIY car modifiers to tackle the project: Marcos Ramirez, a Bay Area maker, mechanic and artist; Boston-based Richard Benoit, whose YouTube channel Rich Rebuilds is largely dedicated to the modification of pre-owned Tesla models; and German designer and YouTuber Laura Kampf.

Giertz's truck looks exactly like what it is: a Model 3 with the top part of the back half removed. As such, it blurs the line between sedan and pickup, which used to be a popular design style in the 1970s and 80s, until consumers decided that bigger is better. Think Chevy El Camino, or Ford Ranchero. But Giertz smartly added some standard truck accoutrements, like a lumber rack with Hella lights attached to the front, so that it wouldn't look out of place among the Rams and Silverados of the world. It wasn't a project without its obstacles. After stripping the backseat and the trunk of its many parts, the Model 3 refused to start. Ramirez explained that the car was reporting "all of its many faults" to Tesla headquarters via cell connection, or essentially "snitching" on the YouTubers who were trying to modify it. They also ran into problems after cutting through the first beam when the metal started to buckle slightly. Luckily they were able to reinforce the steel and keep going.

hackingbear writes: While intellectual property violation is a major accusation against China in the on-going US-China trade war, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio filed legislation on Monday that would prevent Huawei from seeking damages in U.S. patent courts, after the Chinese firm demanded that Verizon Communications pay $1 billion to license the rights to patented technology. Under the amendment -- seen by Reuters -- companies on certain U.S. government watch lists, which would include Huawei, would not be allowed to seek relief under U.S. law with respect to U.S. patents, including bringing legal action over patent infringement.

Google today launched a new Chrome extension that will simplify the process of reporting a malicious site to the Google Safe Browsing team so that it can be analyzed, reviewed, and blacklisted in Chrome and other browsers that support the Safe Browsing API. From a report: Named the Suspicious Site Reporter, this extension adds an icon to the Google Chrome toolbar that when pressed, opens a popup window from where users can file an automatic report for the current site they're on, and which they suspect might be up to no good. "If the site is added to Safe Browsing's lists, you'll not only protect Chrome users but users of other browsers and across the entire web," said Emily Schechter, Chrome Product Manager. The Safe Browsing API is implemented not only in the mobile and desktop versions of Chrome but also in the mobile and desktop versions of Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari.

Hours after Facebook unveiled its cryptocurrency project today, European officials have called for scrutiny of the plan, raising concerns over whether the project was sufficiently regulated. From a report: French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the digital currency known as Libra shouldn't be seen as a replacement for traditional currencies. "It is out of question" that Libra "become a sovereign currency," Le Maire said in an interview on Europe 1 radio. "It can't and it must not happen." Le Maire called on the Group of Seven central bank governors, guardians of the global monetary system, to prepare a report on Facebook's project for their July meeting. His concerns include privacy, money laundering and terrorism finance. Libra was also a talking point at the European Central Bank's annual symposium in Sintra, Portugal, where Bank of England Governor Mark Carney referenced Libra. "Anything that works in this world will become instantly systemic and will have to be subject to the highest standards off regulation," he said.

The southwestern tip of Iceland is a barren volcanic peninsula called Reykjanesskagi. It's home to the twin towns of Keflavik and Njardvik, around 19,000 people, and the country's main airport. On the edge of the settlement is a complex of metal-clad buildings belonging to the IT company Advania, each structure roughly the size of an Olympic-size swimming pool. Less than three years ago there were three of them. By April 2018, there were eight. Today there are 10, and the foundations have been laid for an 11th.

From a report: This is part of a boom fostered partly by something that Icelanders don't usually rave about: the weather. Life on the North Atlantic island tends to be chilly, foggy, and windy, though hard frosts are not common. The annual average temperature in the capital, Reykjavik, is around 41F (5C), and even when the summer warmth kicks in, the mercury rarely rises above 68. Iceland has realized that even though this climate may not be great for sunning yourself on the beach, it is very favorable to one particular industry: data. Each one of those Advania buildings in Reykjanesskagi is a large data center, home to thousands of computers. They are constantly crunching away, processing instructions, transmitting data, and mining Bitcoin. Data centers like these generate large amounts of heat and need round-the-clock cooling, which would usually require considerable energy.