With access to years of data on the purchase activity of hundreds of millions of unique credit and debit cards across millions of small businesses, payments app Square has a window into spending patterns that few other tech companies can match. By supplementing that data with contact details that shoppers provide to Square for the purpose of getting digital receipts, the company is able to assemble expansive profiles of consumer behavior that it can use to run marketing and loyalty programs for its small-business customers. But misfires happen. From a report: Square has forwarded receipts documenting transactions as mundane as a cup of coffee and as sensitive as an obstetrician's visit to people who were uninvolved in the purchases, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. In some cases, neither the purchaser nor the recipient could say why Square sent receipts to the people it did. At issue are the methods that tech companies employ to make money off of the financial data of their users, as well as the degree to which those companies disclose or get consent from their users about those efforts. Data on individuals' credit-card transactions can be particularly delicate and more revealing than their social-media posts or web-browsing activity. The Journal reported last year that Facebook requested detailed information from large U.S. banks about their customers as part of an effort to offer new services to users, but that data privacy emerged as a sticking point.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: With in-screen fingerprint readers quickly becoming a regular feature of flagship phones, manufacturers are starting to wonder about what other things they can stick under the display. In the past day, both Oppo and Xiaomi have taken to social media to show off the latest development: under-display front-facing cameras. Forget camera notches, hole punch displays, and complicated pop-up mechanisms; the under-display camera enables all-screen smartphone designs with no moving parts.

Under-display cameras will work a lot like optical under-display fingerprint readers -- a CMOS chip will be placed under a transparent section of the display, and it will peer through the pixels to see the outside world. For an optical fingerprint reader, the image capturing setup only needs to be of high enough quality to identify the ridges and valleys of your fingertip. For selfies and video chats, there will be much higher demands for image quality, and we wonder what obstructing the camera view with pixels will do to the image quality. Both Xiaomi and Oppo shared videos of the in-display cameras working, but the videos are too low quality to make any kind of image quality determinations. When you aren't taking a picture, the display pixels work normally, and when it's picture time, the pixels around the camera turn off, allowing the camera to see through the display. Xiaomi detailed some of its implementation, saying it was using a "special low-reflective glass" for better image quality.

In addition to the "Sign in With Apple" button, Apple announced another privacy-focused measure at its WWDC on Monday: developers are no longer permitted to include third-party ads or analytics tools in apps in the App Store's kid category. Engadget reports: The company laid out the rule in its updated guidelines for app submissions, confirming a report from last week that it would add such additional protections for younger users. Developers are also prohibited from including external links or in-app purchases, unless they're in a section of the app only accessible to parents. Apple also urged developers to be mindful of privacy laws in various jurisdictions regarding the data they collect from kids.

One of the most ridiculous announcements made at Apple's WWDC on Monday was the new Pro Display XDR monitor. It's a monitor made to pair with the new Mac Pro, complete with top-level specs and a staggering $5,000 starting price. CNET reports: The monitor's chief feature is high-dynamic range, aka HDR. Doing HDR correctly requires a lot of horsepower to illuminate the screen, and the XDR monitor can get exceedingly bright -- and stay that way. Apple says an advanced cooling system can maintain its 1,000 nits brightness "indefinitely." The monitor has a full-array backlight with 576 zones of full array local dimming -- more than just about any similarly equipped TV available. That advanced dimming tech likely contributes to the incredibly high 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio specification.

At 32 inches and a resolution of 6,016 x 3,384, the Pro Display XDR is Apple's largest retina display ever. While not used in many TVs (which are either 4K or 8K), the 6K resolution is increasingly popular for video capture, with cameras like the Pansonic Lumix S1H, Sony Venice, and models from Red doing 6K. Apple has also improved the screen to better control reflections and offers a new matte option called "nano-texture, with glass etched at the nanometer level for low reflectivity and less glare." The matte option brings the price of the monitor up to $6,000. Apple also talks up its polarizer technology and wide off-axis viewing angle. Pre-set reference modes include HDR video (P3-ST 2084), Digital Cinema (P3-DCI) and Photography (P3-D65). In traditional Apple fashion, the Pro Display XDR does not ship with a stand -- you'll have to buy that separately. The optional $999 Pro stand allows users to articulate the screen and place it in various positions. It has tilt, height, and rotation adjustment, meaning you can rotate it from landscape to portrait mode, juts like your iPhone.

Apple is also selling a VESA mount adapter for $199, but that will require you to buy another third-party stand.

Apple CEO Tim Cook today announced that the company is expanding Apple TV controller support to include "two of the best and most popular game controllers available, Xbox One S and PlayStation DualShock 4" with the next tvOS update. Unfortunately, as Ars Technica notes, this "does not include original Xbox One control pads that shipped with the 2013 version of the system -- only the Bluetooth-enabled controller update that premiered alongside Microsoft's One S update in 2016 will work with Apple TV." From the report: The announcement, which drew large and sustained applause in the presentation hall, comes nearly four years after Apple's second-generation Apple TV became the company's first foray into TV-based gaming since the ill-fated Pippin. At launch, Apple TV games were required to support the hardware's touchpad-focused, tilt-sensitive remote, and those games could optionally support any number of MFi controllers already designed for mobile iOS hardware. While Apple reversed that decision in mid-2016 to allow for MFi-exclusive games, Apple TV game developers continue to complain about the fragmented control landscape on Apple's set-top box.

Apple today announced SwiftUI, a framework that complements its open source compiled programming language for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, Linux, and other platforms alongside a reimagined development experience in Xcode 11. VentureBeat reports: SwiftUI lets developers specify UI with simple declarations. In practice, it reduces hundreds of lines of code to just a few, and it provides default support for common features like localization for right-to-left languages. That's in addition to built-in support for animated transitions, live previews, and the newly announced dark mode and accessibility tools in iOS.

Apple says it's fully integrated with the aforementioned Xcode development experience and native frameworks for Apple Watch, tvOS, and macOS apps. Within the new Xcode, speaking of, library views live in a left-side drawer from which they can be dragged and dropped onto the app design canvas; as they're added, code populates the editor on the left. Meanwhile, views can be adjusted with custom-tailored inspectors or the code converted into a scalable list, and previews can run directly on connected Apple devices, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

Bitcoin has a lingering problem that few people are talking about amid the renewed exuberance of the recent price surge. From a report: Hardly anyone is using the world's largest cryptocurrency for anything beyond speculation. Data from New York-based blockchain researcher Chainalysis show that only 1.3% of economic transactions came from merchants in the first four months of 2019, little changed over the boom and bust cycles of the prior two years. Even though marque companies such as AT&T now let customers pay with cryptocurrencies, the problem is that few speculators want to use the digital coins to pay for wireless services when the digital asset's price might surge another 50% in a matter of weeks. That's become the main dilemma with the cryptocurrency: Bitcoin needs the hype to attract mass appeal to be considered a viable electronic alternative to money but it has developed a culture of "hodlers" who advocate accumulation rather than spending.

chiefcrash writes from a report via Bloomberg: Blockchains LLC, a Nevada-based startup that plans to build an Ethereum city, has acquired Slock.it, the German-based startup known for their attempt in 2016 to build an Ethereum computer as well as the DAO. President David Berns declined to say how much the firm paid for Slock.it, but said a major incentive for the purchase was the target company's Incubed product, which connects devices like appliances and vehicles to the Ethereum blockchain using minimal bandwidth and power. "For our vision of what we want to do for smart cities, that software is key," Berns said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Apple on Monday announced the next version of MacOS. Called Catalina, the next major revision of the MacOS will replace the iTunes app with three dedicated media apps: Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and Apple TV. The update coming this fall will also let Mac users run iPad apps they can download through the Mac App Store. Using the new Project Catalyst development tool, third-party iPad developers will be able to easily bring their iPad apps for the Mac, Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, said. Apple's goal for developers is to help them build apps without a lot of extra effort that can run on both iOS and MacOS devices. And Mac users will benefit by getting access to an expanded collection of MacOS apps. MacOS Catalina will also let you use an iPad as a second screen. Developer betas for MacOS Catalina and iOS 13 will be available today. Public betas will come in July, and both desktop and mobile OSes will ship in the fall.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: iOS 13 will introduce Dark Mode to iPhones, iPads, and iPods for the first time. Apple brought Dark Mode to Macs via macOS Mojave last year, to much fanfare. As was the case there, Dark Mode doesn't actually change anything about the interface -- just the aesthetics. Apple showed Dark Mode running on the company's first-party apps for news, calendar, messages, and more. Dark Mode may also save battery life on devices with emissive OLED displays -- savings like that were discovered in our own tests comparing Android devices with LCD and OLED displays. But we'll have to test the new OS to be sure.

Every iOS update brings changes to key apps made by Apple itself, and most of the apps included with a new installation of iOS have seen some changes. Mail now allows you to mute certain conversations. Maps has a new, easier way of accessing saved locations. The upgrade to Apple Maps will bring far more detail to the overhead view of roads and landmarks, with this rolling out to the entire United States by the end of 2019 and "select countries" next year. Reminders has seen a ground-up interface overhaul, with natural-language processing similar to what's seen in third-party apps -- you'll be able to type the relevant details and Reminders will understand when and where the reminder should be set for. Apple is also adding a swipe-typing ability to its iOS keyboard for the first time, replicating something that has been available in third-party keyboards for years. Notes will have a new gallery view and support for shared folders. Safari will have new options to change text sizing, with per-website settings. The iPad's multitasking UI has also been overhauled, bringing a new window-based experience and an easier way to switch between apps in Slide Over mode. You'll also be able to plug thumb drives into newer iPads with USB-C.

The long-awaited Mac Pro is here. From a report: The new Intel Xeon processor inside the Mac Pro will have up to 28 cores, with up to 300W of power and heavy-duty cooling, "so it can run unconstrained at full power at all times." System memory can be maxed out at an eyebrow-raising 1.5TB, says Apple. There are eight internal PCI Express slots, with four of them being double-wide. Two USB-C and two USB-A ports will grace the front of the system, which is at least one more USB-C port than you'll find on a majority of desktop PC systems and cases today. With this Mac Pro, Apple is launching a custom expansion module it calls an MPX Module. This is a giant quad-wide PCIe card that fits two graphics cards, has its own dedicated heatsink, and also has a Thunderbolt 3 connector on the bottom for extra bandwidth / power / display connectivity. Apple says you can spec that out with AMD's Radeon Pro Vega 2 or Radeon Pro Vega 2 Duo, the latter of which would get you four GPUs in total. The power supply of the new Mac Pro maxes out at 1.4kW. Three large fans sit at the front, just behind the new aluminum grille, blowing air across the system at a rate of 300 cubic feet per minute. It starts at $5,999.

Apple today announced a "Sign in with Apple" button -- that is similar to sign-in buttons from Twitter, Facebook or Google that allow users to quickly login to a range of services using their social media account. But unlike any existing solution, Apple is focusing on privacy. From a report: More importantly, you can choose to hide your email address, and Apple will generate a random email ID visible to only to that particular app that'll forward all emails to your main email ID. Plus, this method creates a unique random email for each app, so that they can't track you and your personal data. The new sign-in feature is available across MacOS, iOS, and websites.

Nearly all applicants for US visas will have to submit their social media details under newly adopted rules. From a report: The State Department regulations say people will have to submit social media names and five years' worth of email addresses and phone numbers. When proposed last year, authorities estimated the proposal would affect 14.7 million people annually. Certain diplomatic and official visa applicants will be exempt from the stringent new measures. However, people travelling to the US to work or to study will have to hand over their information. "We are constantly working to find mechanisms to improve our screening processes to protect US citizens, while supporting legitimate travel to the United States," the department reportedly said. Previously, only applicants who needed additional vetting -- such as people who had been to parts of the world controlled by terrorist groups -- would need to hand over this data.

The Federal Trade Commission will lead any antitrust investigation into Facebook under an arrangement that gives the Justice Department chief oversight of Alphabet's Google, as the U.S. government gears up for scrutiny of the country's major tech companies over competition concerns. From a report: The FTC secured the rights to begin a potential investigation of Facebook and whether it has engaged in unlawful monopolistic practices as part of an agreement that allowed the Justice Department to take the reins in a Google probe, according to people familiar with the matter. The FTC and Justice Department share authority in enforcing U.S. antitrust law and at times must work out turf arrangements regarding which agency will handle what issues. FTC already has spent more than a year investigating Facebook on privacy issues related to how it handles users' data. That probe, however, doesn't focus on antitrust questions on whether Facebook is stifling competition in the digital realm. The fact that the commission formally secured jurisdiction on those issues suggests it is considering even more rigorous scrutiny of the social media giant.

Elon Musk has made some interesting new comments about the upcoming Tesla Pickup truck, including a first hint at the starting price, which he aims to keep under $50,000, and some of the functionality. From a report: During an appearance on Ride the Lighting podcast this weekend, Musk made some new comments about the upcoming electric pickup truck. He confirmed that Tesla is aiming to keep the starting price under $50,000: "We don't want it to be really expensive. I think it got to start at less than $50,000 -- it's got to be like $49,000 starting price max. Ideally less. It just can't be unaffordable. It's got to be something that's affordable. There will be versions of the truck that will be more expensive, but you've got to be able to get a really great truck for $49,000 or less."

As for the capabilities of the Tesla pickup truck, the CEO is aiming for high standards: "It's going to be a truck that is more capable than other trucks. The goal is to be a better truck than a [Ford] F-150 in terms of truck-like functionality and be a better sports car than a standard [Porsche] 911. That's the aspiration."

San Franciscans may soon be able to bounce their way around town, if a Swedish-based mobility company has its way. From a report: Last month, start-up company Cangoroo announced plans to deploy hundreds of pogo sticks in select cities to directly compete with electric scooters as a transportation option. Cangoroo officials said they plan to first launch their pogo sticks in the Swedish cities of Malmo and Stockholm sometime this summer. After that, they would deploy the sticks in both London and San Francisco. On Friday, Cangoroo CEO and co-founder Adam Mikkelsen said his company chose San Francisco as one of its launch cities because of its reputation as place of innovation. He added that Cangoroo could start deploying anywhere between 100 and 200 pogo sticks in San Francisco as early as late summer or possibly in the fall. [...] The launch of hundreds of e-scooters last year in the city by a handful of companies quickly drew the ire of residents who complained the dockless scooters were being thrown on sidewalks and blocking walkways.

dryriver writes: Vice/Motherboard writes that since the U.S. Navy admitted that its pilots encounter unidentified flying objects all the time, and mainstream news outlets like the New York Times have devoted coverage to Navy Pilots' UFO encounter stories, old UFO hunters around the world feel vindicated, and many new younger people are taking an interest in the phenomenon.

For decades people who believe in UFOs, UFO lore and take UFO sightings and UFO encounters seriously have been widely ridiculed as stupid, uneducated, gullible, deluded or crazy. Now that highly trained military pilots are talking about encountering UFOs all the time and mainstream media doesn't ridicule UFO sightings anymore — this only took a few decades — a fundamental taboo appears to have been broken. UFO sightings are suddenly real, not a product of overactive imaginations, people mistaking clouds for aliens or people spreading fake news to sell books, seminars and videos.

The question is, why, for so long, did mainstream media systematically ignore and ridicule a phenomenon just about everybody around the world has some knowledge of and had some exposure to? And if UFOs are "officially not crazy" now, what else that still is ridiculed by the MSM may also turn out to be "officially not crazy" in the future?
As a counterpoint, long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. argues that "UFO's are real, they are unidentified flying objects. There is absolutely no evidence that they are Aliens.

"If people continue to equate them with little green men then they can still expect to be ridiculed."

"Boeing on Sunday said some of its 737 planes, including many 737 Max aircraft, may have faulty parts on their wings," reports CNN. Working with the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing said it has reached out to airlines that fly 737 planes, advising them to inspect their slat track assemblies on Max and NG aircraft. The 737 NG series includes the 737-600, -700, -800 and -900 planes. Leading edge slats are an aerodynamic control surface that extend from the front of the wing. Some the tracks may not meet manufacturing standards and may need to be replaced, Boeing and the FAA said. They said if the parts are found to be defective, airlines should replace them before returning the planes to service.

The faulty parts could fail prematurely or crack. The FAA said a part failure would not bring down a plane, it could damage an aircraft while in flight. Boeing has sent out a service bulletin and the FAA will issue an airworthiness directive requiring airlines to inspect and repair its slat track assemblies within 10 days.

The company discovered the problem Friday, when Boeing was meeting with the parts supplier. Boeing employees noticed some of the parts were not heat treated, which led them to believe there might be a safety issue.
CNBC reminds readers that the Boeing 737 Max have already been grounded worldwide after two fatal crashes, with airlines cancelling thousands of flights through August.

"Boeing's CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, last week said the company had to regain the public's trust...."

An anonymous reader quotes the Verge: YouTube, Snapchat, Gmail, Nest, Discord, and a number of other web services are suffering from outages in the U.S. today. The root cause appears to be problems with Google's Cloud service which powers apps other than just Google's own web services. Google has issued a status update on its Cloud dashboard, noting that issues began at around 3:25PM ET / 12:25PM PT.

The issues appear to be mostly affecting those on the East Coast of the US, but some YouTube and Gmail users across Europe are also reporting that they're unable to access the services. Discord and Snapchat users are experiencing issues logging into the apps, and these both use Google Cloud on the backend.

In his TechCrunch column, software engineer/journalist Jon Evans writes that last month "marked a victory for sanity and pragmatism over irrational paranoia." I'm talking about Microsoft finally -- finally! but credit to them for doing this nonetheless! -- removing the password expiration policies from their Windows 10 security baseline... Many enterprise-scale organizations (including TechCrunch's owner Verizon) require their users to change their passwords regularly. This is a spectacularly counterproductive policy.

To quote Microsoft: "Recent scientific research calls into question the value of many long-standing password-security practices such as password expiration policies, and points instead to better alternatives... If a password is never stolen, there's no need to expire it. And if you have evidence that a password has been stolen, you would presumably act immediately rather than wait for expiration to fix the problem... If an organization has successfully implemented banned-password lists, multi-factor authentication, detection of password-guessing attacks, and detection of anomalous logon attempts, do they need any periodic password expiration? And if they haven't implemented modern mitigations, how much protection will they really gain from password expiration...?"

Perfect security doesn't exist. World-class security is hard. But decent security is generally quite accessible, if you faithfully follow some basic rules. In order to do so, it's best to keep those rules to a minimum, and get rid of the ones that don't make sense. Password expiration is one of those. Goodbye to it, and good riddance.
Instead the column recommends password managing software to avoid password re-use across sites, as well as two-factor authentication. "And please, if you work with code or data repositories, stop checking your passwords and API keys into your repos."

But if your company still has a password expiration policy, he suggests mailing Microsoft's blog post to your sys-admin. "They will ignore you at first, of course, because that's what enterprise administrators do, and because information security (like transportation security) is too often an irrational one-way ratchet because our culture of fear incentivizes security theater rather than actual security -- but they may grudgingly begin to accept that the world has moved on."