An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider: Shortly after news broke that Elon Musk's Boring Company landed its first tunnel-building project in Las Vegas, it released a video of two Teslas racing in its tunnel near Los Angeles -- one using the roads, and the other using a Boring Company tunnel. The Tesla in the tunnel took one minute and 36 seconds to get to the destination, reaching 127 mph, the video, posted early Friday, showed. The car using the roads arrived in four minutes and 45 seconds, after getting stuck at a red light. The video revealed that the Boring Company had done away with a key element of the tunnel's original design: rails that guide the car.

The video revealed that a key element of the design of the Boring Company's 1.14-mile test tunnel in Hawthorne had changed. This demonstration of the tunnel differed from earlier ones in which cars were whisked along on rails. Replying to a tweet asking whether there were no more rails and the car was driving on Autopilot, Tesla's semi-autonomous driver-assist system, Musk said, "Pretty much." When asked why the original rail system had been abandoned, Musk added, "This is simple and just works."
The automotive site Jalopnik complains this misses the dream of a vacuum-based hyperloop system transporting speedy proprietary vehicles on frictionless electrified skates: Yes, for those keeping score, in a mere two years we've gone from a futuristic vision of electric skates zooming around a variety of vehicles in a network of underground tunnels to -- and I cannot stress this enough -- a very small, paved tunnel that can fit one (1) car.

The video's marketing conceit is that the car in the tunnel beats a car trying to go the same distance on roads. You'll never believe this, but the car that has a dedicated right of way wins... To recap: Musk's company spent two years developing a very narrow car tunnel.

"Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, created and promoted a 'military discount' that charges service members who are eligible to file for free," reports ProPublica, in a story co-published with The Military Times: In patriotism-drenched promotions, press releases and tweets, TurboTax promotes special deals for military service members, promising to help them file their taxes online for free or at a discount. Yet some service members who've filed by going to the TurboTax Military landing page told ProPublica they were charged as much as $150 -- even though, under a deal with the government, service members making under $66,000 are supposed to be able to file on TurboTax for free...

To find TurboTax's Free File landing page, service members typically have to go through the IRS website. TurboTax Military, by contrast, is promoted on the company's home page and elsewhere. Starting through the Military landing page directs many users to paid products even when they are eligible to get the same service for no cost using the Free File edition...

The New York regulator investigating TurboTax is also examining the military issue, according to a person familiar with the probe.
The authors of the article tested the software by entering tax information for a military household in Virginia that was eligible for free filing. TurboTax Military "tried to upgrade us or convince us to pay for side products six times. We declined those extras each time.

"Finally, the program told us we had to pay $159.98 to finish filing. And that 'military discount'? All of $5."

"Thomas Parker, sometimes described as the 'Edison of Britain', was a British engineer and electrical technologies inventor working in the 1800s who was also one of the world's first environmentalists," remembers Slashdot reader dryriver.

Parker had been troubled by the pollution in coal-burning cities around London -- and decided to do something about it: Parker was very adept both at inventing new things and at significantly improving technologies that others had invented before him. He improved everything from steam pumps, to electrical batteries, electric motors, alternators and dynamos, invented the award winning "Kyrle Grate," which was designed to allow anthracite coal to be burned inside of it, and was responsible for the electrification of London's "Underground" Subway system and tramways build in other British cities.

There has been attempts at electrical cars before Parker's going back as far as the 1830s, but his was revolutionary in many aspects. The Elwell-Parker car was fitted with Parker's high-capacity rechargeable batteries, and later vehicles had hydraulic brakes on all four wheels, as well as four-wheel steering. These features are even now being described as revolutionary.

While Parker's electrical cars were quite popular in America and Britain for a number of years (read more here), soon improved gas- and diesel-based vehicles caused public interest in electric cars to wane. Parker's company Elwell Parker, which survives to this day, then focused on making electrical speciality vehicles for factories and warehouses -- electric carts for moving equipment and crates around, and precursors of modern forklifts, for example.

While everybody knows electrical inventors like Edison and Tesla today, Thomas Parker is barely known and barely remembered...

A post this week on Microsoft's developer blog explains "what we, the Python team, have done to make Python easier to install on Windows" after the next update.

TLDR: Typing 'python' in Windows' Command Prompt will take you to the Microsoft Store's Python page: Microsoft has been involved with the Python community for over twelve years, and currently employ four of the key contributors to the language and primary runtime. The growth of Python has been incredible, as it finds homes among data scientists, web developers, system administrators, and students, and roughly half of this work is already happening on Windows. And yet, Python developers on Windows find themselves facing more friction than on other platforms. It's been widely known for many years that Windows is the only mainstream operating system that does not include a Python interpreter out of the box... So we made things easier.

First, we helped the community release their distribution of Python to the Microsoft Store. This version of Python is fully maintained by the community, installs easily on Windows 10, and automatically makes common commands such as python, pip and idle available (as well as equivalents with version numbers python3 and python3.7, for all the commands, just like on Linux). Finally, with the May 2019 Windows Update, we are completing the picture. While Python continues to remain completely independent from the operating system, every install of Windows will include python and python3 commands that take you directly to the Python store page. We believe that the Microsoft Store package is perfect for users starting out with Python, and given our experience with and participation in the Python community we are pleased to endorse it as the default choice.
And while this fix is only for Python, the Microsoft post adds that "Over time, we plan to extend similar integration to other developer tools and reduce the getting started friction."

"SpaceX's unorthodox card-dealing launch of 60 Starlink broadband satellites has led to an unusual viewing opportunity for skywatchers -- and an occasion to wonder about the impact of such mega-constellations on the natural night sky," reports GeekWire: A video captured by satellite-watcher Marco Langbroek in the Netherlands sums up the awe... It didn't take long for Langbroek and other skywatchers to work out the coordinates for the long train of satellites, and to plug those coordinates into online satellite-pass calculators such as CalSky. On Twitter, David Dickinson, author of "The Universe Today: Ultimate Guide to Viewing the Cosmos," started doling out location-specific sighting predictions based on the Orbitron satellite-tracking program.

CalSky automatically picks up your coordinates for satellite sightings, but for those in the Seattle area, the best time to look for the Starlink train passing by tonight is likely to be in the range of 10:50 to 11:10 p.m. PT, going from southwest to northeast. That's a liberal stretch of time that accounts for a range of locations (say, Port Townsend vs. North Bend), plus uncertainties in the orbital estimates. There are other passes overnight at around 12:30, 3:50 and 5:20 a.m. PT. The brightness of the satellites is a question mark. Some say they can be seen with the naked eye, while others advise scanning with binoculars. A lot depends on how the satellites pick up the glint of the sun after dusk or before dawn. Tonight Langbroek reported that the satellite train wasn't as bright as it was the night before.

Speaking of brightness, astronomers and SpaceX fans have already begun the debate over the prospect of having thousands of broadband-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit. The 60 satellites launched this week merely represent the beginning of a campaign aimed at launching as many as 11,000 such spacecraft. And that's just for SpaceX's Starlink system. Thousands more could go into orbit for the constellations being contemplated by OneWeb, Telesat, LeoSat Enterprises and Amazon's Project Kuiper.
Today Elon Musk tweeted defensively that "sats will be in darkness when stars are visible" -- while GeekWire points out that the satellites are also scheduled to spread. "Within just a few days, the tightly spaced 'train' will turn into a dispersed chain that girdles the globe," their article concludes.

"And once that happens, chances are that skywatchers and sky-worriers alike will turn their attention to the next batch of Starlink satellites."

"CrossFit, the branded workout regimen, deleted its Facebook and Instagram pages earlier this week and explained the reasoning through an impassioned press release," reports the Verge.

TechSpot has more details: In a press release, CrossFit revealed the breaking point: the deletion of the Banting7DayMealPlan user group, without warning or explanation. Banting is an alternative high-fat low-carb diet with no set meal times or processed foods, and its Facebook group had 1.65 million users, including 1 million from South Africa. The group mostly posts testimonials and discusses the merits of the diet or how it might be implemented. While the group has been reinstated (still without explanation), CrossFit is right to call into question why Facebook removed it in the first place. While Banting is probably inadvisable, groups advocating for it have a right to exist.

Still, that's far from the only reason CrossFit abandoned the platforms...
CrossFit sees itself as a community of 15,000 affiliates and millions of individuals against "an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies," according to their press release -- so they may be feeling vulnerable. CrossFit, Inc. defends relentlessly the right of its affiliates, trainers, and athletes to practice CrossFit, build voluntary CrossFit associations and businesses, and speak openly and freely about the ideas and principles that animate our views of exercise, nutrition, and health...

Facebook and its properties host and oversee a significant share of the marketplace of public thought... Facebook thus serves as a de facto authority over the public square, arbitrating a worldwide exchange of information as well as overseeing the security of the individuals and communities who entrust their ideas, work, and private data to this platform. This mandates a certain responsibility and assurance of good faith, transparency, and due process. CrossFit, Inc., as a voluntary user of and contributor to this marketplace, can and must remove itself from this particular manifestation of the public square when it becomes clear that such responsibilities are betrayed or reneged upon to the detriment of our community.
CrossFit says they're "suspending" all activity on the platforms while they investigate "the circumstances pertaining to Facebook's deletion of the Banting7DayMealPlan and other well-known public complaints about the social-media company," adding that CrossFit "will no longer support or use Facebook's services until further notice."

Chris Siebenmann is a Unix sys-admin for the CS department at the University of Toronto. He recently saw a tweet asking about the possibility of community-implemented generics for the Go programming language, and posted a widely-read response on his blog.

"There are many answers for why this won't happen, but one that does not usually get said out loud is that Go is Google's language, not the community's." Yes, there's a community that contributes things to Go, some of them important and valued things; you only have to look at the diversity of people in CONTRIBUTORS or see the variety of people appearing in the commits. But Google is the gatekeeper for these community contributions; it alone decides what is and isn't accepted into Go. To the extent that there even is a community process for deciding what is accepted, there is an 800-pound gorilla in the room. Nothing is going to go into Go that Google objects to, and if Google decides that something needs to be in Go, it will happen.

(The most clear and obvious illustration of this is what happened with Go modules, where one member of Google's Go core team discarded the entire system the outside Go community had been working on in favour of a relatively radically different model. See eg for one version of this history.)

Or in short, Go has community contributions but it is not a community project. It is Google's project. This is an unarguable thing, whether you consider it to be good or bad, and it has effects that we need to accept. For example, if you want some significant thing to be accepted into Go, working to build consensus in the community is far less important than persuading the Go core team. (As a corollary, sinking a lot of time and effort into a community effort that doesn't have enthusiastic buy-in from the Go core team is probably a waste of time....) On the good and bad scale, there is a common feeling that Go has done well by having a small core team with good taste and a consistent vision for the language, a team that is not swayed by outside voices and is slow moving and biased to not making changes.
The essay also concedes that "I like Go and have for a fair while now, and I'm basically okay with how the language has been evolving and how the Go core team has managed it. I certainly think it's a good idea to take things like generics slowly.

"But at the same time, how things developed around Go modules has left a bad taste in my mouth and I now can't imagine becoming a Go contributor myself, even for small trivial changes."

UPDATE (1/29/2024) In a 2023 talk, Rob Pike -- one of Go's original creators -- addressed the question head-on. "People often assume Google tells the Go team what to do. That's simply not true.

"Google is incredibly generous in its support for Go, but does not set the agenda. The community has far more input. Google has a huge internal Go code base that the team uses to test and verify releases, but this is done by importing from the public repo into Google, not the other way around. In short, the core Go team is paid by Google but they are independent."

"Tesla's updated Navigate on Autopilot software now lets some drivers choose whether the car can automatically change lanes without his or her input," writes Consumer Reports -- before complaining that the feature "doesn't work very well and could create safety risks for drivers."

An anonymous reader quotes their report: In practice, we found that the new Navigate on Autopilot lane-changing feature lagged far behind a human driver's skills. The feature cut off cars without leaving enough space, and even passed other cars in ways that violate state laws, according to several law enforcement representatives CR interviewed for this report. As a result, the driver often had to prevent the system from making poor decisions. "The system's role should be to help the driver, but the way this technology is deployed, it's the other way around," says Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports' senior director of auto testing. "It's incredibly nearsighted. It doesn't appear to react to brake lights or turn signals, it can't anticipate what other drivers will do, and as a result, you constantly have to be one step ahead of it...."

Multiple testers reported that the Tesla often changed lanes in ways that a safe human driver wouldn't -- cutting too closely in front of other cars, and passing on the right. An area of particular concern is Tesla's claim that the vehicle's three rearward-facing cameras can detect fast-approaching objects from the rear better than the average driver can. Our testers found the opposite to be true in practice. "The system has trouble responding to vehicles that approach quickly from behind," Fisher says. "Because of this, the system will often cut off a vehicle that is going at a much faster speed, since it doesn't seem to sense the oncoming car until it's relatively close."

Fisher says merging into traffic is another problem. "It is reluctant to merge in heavy traffic, but when it does, it often immediately applies the brakes to create space behind the follow car," he says, "and this can be a rude surprise to the vehicle you cut off... This isn't a convenience at all. Monitoring the system is much harder than just changing lanes yourself."
In the article David Friedman, vice president of advocacy at Consumer Reports, complains that Tesla "is showing what not to do on the path toward self-driving cars: release increasingly automated driving systems that aren't vetted properly."

"The Air Force is investigating the Navy for a cyber intrusion into its network, according to a memo obtained by Military Times."

Zorro (Slashdot reader #15,797) shares their report: The bizarre turn of events stems from a decision by a Navy prosecutor to embed hidden tracking software into emails sent to defense attorneys, including one Air Force lawyer, involved in a high-profile war-crimes case of a Navy SEAL in San Diego. The tracking device was an attempt to find out who was leaking information to the editor of Navy Times, a sister publication. A similar tracking device was also sent to Carl Prine, the Navy Times editor, who has written numerous stories about the case.

Navy Capt. David Wilson, chief of staff for the Navy's Defense Service Offices, wrote in the May 19 memo that an Air Force attorney was among the defense lawyers who had received emails with the hidden tracking software, which he described as "malware"...

"In fact, I've learned that the Air Force is treating this malware as a cyber-intrusion on their network and have seized the Air Force Individual Military Counsel's computer and phone for review," he wrote.

PC Magazine interviewed Neal Stephenson about his new upcoming book Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell, as well as "the digital afterlife, and why social media is a doomsday machine." [Possible spoilers ahead]: The hybrid sci-fi/fantasy novel begins in the present day with Richard "Dodge" Forthrast, an eccentric multibillionaire who made his fortune in the video game industry. When a freak accident during a routine medical procedure leaves him brain-dead, his family is left to contend with his request to have his brain preserved until the technology exists to bring him back to life. The near-future world of Fall is full of familiar buzzwords and concepts. Augmented reality headsets, next-gen wireless networks, self-driving vehicles, facial recognition, quantum computing, blockchain and distributed cryptography all feature prominently. Stephenson also spends a lot of time examining how the internet and social media, which Dodge and other characters often refer to in Fall as the Miasma, is irrevocably changing society and altering the fabric of reality...

Q: How would you describe the current state of the internet? Just in a general sense of its role in our daily lives, and where that concept of the Miasma came from for you.

Neal Stephenson: I ended up having a pretty dark view of it, as you can kind of tell from the book. I saw someone recently describe social media in its current state as a doomsday machine, and I think that's not far off. We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems that are designed not to have humans in the loop, because if humans are in the loop they're not scalable and if they're not scalable they can't make tons and tons of money.

The result is the situation we see today where no one agrees on what factual reality is and everyone is driven in the direction of content that is "more engaging," which almost always means that it's more emotional, it's less factually based, it's less rational, and kind of destructive from a basic civics standpoint... I sort of was patting myself on the back for really being on top of things and predicting the future. And then I discovered that the future was way ahead of me. I've heard remarks in a similar vein from other science-fiction novelists: do we even have a role anymore?
Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot's reader in 2004, and since then has "spent years as an advisor for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' private space company Blue Origin," the article points out. He's also currently the "chief futurist" for Magic Leap -- though he tells his interviewer that some ideas go back much further.

Part of his new book builds on "a really old idea" from security researcher Matt Blaze, who in the mid-1990s talked about "Encyclopedia Disinformatica", which Stephenson describes as "a sort of fake Wikipedia containing plausible-sounding but deliberately false information as a way of sending the message to people that they shouldn't just believe everything that they see on the internet."

schwit1 shares an excerpt from a report via Bloomberg: In a quiet neighborhood near Google's headquarters last month, rusty, oleaginous sewage was seeping from a parked RV onto the otherwise pristine street. Sergeant Wahed Magee, of the Mountain View Police Department, was furious. Mountain View is a wealthy town that's home to Alphabet, the world's fourth-most valuable public corporation and Google's owner. Magee spends a lot of his time knocking on the doors of RVs parked on the city's streets, logging license plates and marking rigs that haven't moved for several days. This is the epicenter of a Silicon Valley tech boom that is minting millionaires but also fueling a homelessness crisis that the United Nations recently deemed a human rights violation. Thousands of people live in RVs across San Francisco and the broader Bay Area because they can't afford to rent or buy homes. In December, Mountain View police logged almost 300 RVs that appeared to be used as primary residences. Palo Alto, Berkeley and other Bay Area towns have similar numbers.

Some Silicon Valley towns have cracked down in recent months, creating an even more uncertain future for RV residents. At a March city council meeting, Mountain View voted to ban RVs from parking overnight on public streets. The ban hasn't taken effect yet, but soon, the town's van dwellers will need to go elsewhere. The city council also declared a shelter crisis and passed a new ordinance to ticket vehicles that "discharge domestic sewage on the public right of way." At the meeting, some people opposing the ban blamed Google for the housing crisis. When asked whether the RV situation will ultimately be resolved, Magee looked tired as he thought about the answer. After a 12-hour day, he had a long drive ahead to get home -- he can't afford to live in Mountain View. "The way things are going, I don't see how it's all gonna disappear," he said. "Where are we gonna put everyone?" The Bay Area wants to enjoy wealth concentration like Manhattan, but also the population spread of the suburbs. Something's gotta give.

Both the SD Association and Wi-Fi Alliance have cut ties with Huawei following President Trump's executive order barring companies from doing business with the Chinese company. PhoneDog reports: First up, Huawei has been removed the from the SD Association, a non-profit group that sets the standards for SD and microSD cards. Huawei's name has been removed from the organization's website, and the SD Association confirmed to Android Authority that it's complying with the recent executive order that placed Huawei on the Entity List. This news won't affect existing Huawei phones' ability to accept microSD cards, but the company declined to comment on the effect that it'll have on future models. It likely means that future Huawei devices won't be able to use microSD cards. Huawei does have its own Nano Memory Card format that it can use in its smartphones, though.

Meanwhile, the Wi-Fi Alliance has confirmed to Nikkei that it's "temporarily restricted" Huawei's participation in its activities. "Huawei values its relationships with all partners and associations around the world and understands the difficult situation they are in," Huawei said in response to this news. "We are hopeful this situation will be resolved and are working to find the best solution." Google and ARM also recently stopped working with Huawei. Earlier this week, ARM told staff it must suspend business with the company. Google also suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware and software products, except those covered by open source licenses.

pgmrdlm shares a report from The Guardian: An "astonishing and unparalleled" 2,300-year-old shield made of tree bark has been discovered in Leicestershire, the only example of its kind ever found in Europe. The shield was discovered in 2015 by archaeologists from the University of Leicester Archaeological Service in a site close to the River Soar. Organic objects from the period very rarely survive, but the shield was preserved in waterlogged soil and may have been deposited in a water-filled pit, according to Matt Beamish, the lead archaeologist for the service.

Bark shields of the period were entirely unknown in the northern hemisphere, he told the Guardian, and the assumption was that the material may have been too flimsy for use in war. However experiments to remake the weapon in alder and willow showed the 3mm-thick shield would have been tough enough for battle but incredibly light. It was likely that, contrary to assumptions, similar weapons were widespread, Beamish said. The shield is made from green bark that has been stiffened with internal wooden laths, described by Beamish as "like a whalebone corset of split hardwood," and surrounded by a rim of hazel, with a twisted willow boss. The malleable green wood would then tighten as it dried, giving the shield its strength and forming the rounded rectangles into a slightly "waisted" shape, like a subtle figure of eight. The University of York and University of Leicester have both released statements on the discovery.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Daily Dot: Various YouTube summer camps have begun launching across the nation, designed to turn regular elementary and middle-school-aged children into bonfire internet sensations. Per a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, parents are spending nearly $1,000 dollars a week for their children to learn how to create branded social media-related content. Though YouTube is not affiliated with or in any communication with any summer program, such camps are on the rise, and parents with means have made them a thing.

One summer camp gaining traction is YouTube STAR Creator Studio. Located in Culver City, California, its website states that it "branches out from traditional storytelling to how to create the fun and hilarious content that kids love to watch." The camp is designed for those in first through sixth grade, according to the website, and charges $375 dollars a week. Another prominent company is Level Up, which, according to the organization, became the first company in North America to offer YouTube classes and camps when it opened five years ago. Level Up takes an educational approach toward the platform to attract kids who "want to learn how to create an awesome YouTube channel," and promises that the class will give students the "skills to create engaging videos." The topics covered in Level Up's the summer camp range from learning how to interview people, draft storyboard ideas, and source and sync audio files. "[At our program] younger students are only able to use their parents' accounts," Level Up Founder and CEO Jeff Hughes said. "We work hard to protect the child's and parent's privacy. All of the channels and videos are set as private. All comments are disabled for safety. In addition, we have some parents who want their children to learn the skills but don't want their videos posted yet. In that case, we go through the entire creation process with the exception of uploading. We store them on a thumb drive or Google drive for the parents to bring home."

China has unveiled a new floating bullet train capable of hitting speeds of about 372 mph (600 km/h). CNN reports: On Thursday, the body prototype for the country's latest high-speed magnetic-levitation (maglev) train project rolled off the assembly line in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao. Developed by the state-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) -- the world's largest supplier of rail transit equipment -- the sleek-looking train is scheduled to go into commercial production in 2021 following extensive tests. Maglev trains use magnetic repulsion both to levitate the train up from the ground, which reduces friction, and to propel it forward. The project was co-created by Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Co. Ltd., a German Consortium consisting of Siemens AG, Thyssen Transrapid GMBH and Transrapid International GMBH. "Take Beijing to Shanghai as an example -- counting preparation time for the journey, it takes about 4.5 hours by plane, about 5.5 hours by high-speed rail, and [would only take] about 3.5 hours with [the new] high-speed maglev," said CRRC deputy chief engineer Ding Sansan, head of the train's research and development team, in a statement. For comparison, current trains on the Beijing-Shanghai line have a maximum operating speed of about 217 mph (350 km/h).

The Baltimore city government is recovering from a devastating ransomware attack that has locked up its systems, but officials in the city faced a new problem today. As first reported by The Baltimore Sun, Google blocked city departments from using Gmail accounts created as a workaround. The Verge reports: On May 7th, a ransomware attack froze government systems, including email, and demanded the city hand over bitcoin to reverse the hack. Weeks later, the city is still recovering from the attack, which has also shut down systems for paying water bills and some other services. While officials deal with the problem, which could still take months to fix, some have reportedly signed up for free Gmail accounts to keep operating.

Gmail distinguishes between individual users and users in businesses and other organizations, requiring the latter to pay for the service. According to the Sun, which cited the mayor's office, Google's systems deemed the city officials to be part of an organization, and shut down the temporary accounts. Emails to the city health department, city council aides, and the mayor's office bounced on Thursday, according to the report from the Sun. UPDATE: Google has since fixed the problem. "We have restored access to the Gmail accounts for the Baltimore city officials," the spokesperson said. "Our automated security systems disabled the accounts due to the bulk creation of multiple consumer Gmail accounts from the same network."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Forty-seven Democratic members of Congress are calling for a net neutrality compromise with Republicans, who have refused to support a full restoration of the net neutrality rules repealed by the Ajit Pai-led Federal Communications Commission. The Democratic-majority U.S. House of Representatives voted in April to pass the Save the Internet Act, which would restore the Obama-era FCC's net neutrality rules. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared the bill "dead on arrival" in the Republican-majority Senate.

Republican lawmakers say they'll only accept a net neutrality law that isn't as strict -- even though large majorities of both Democratic and Republican voters support the FCC's old net neutrality rules. On Wednesday, dozens of Democrats asked their party leadership to compromise with the GOP leadership. "We, the undersigned, voted for [the Save the Internet Act] because it represented an opportunity to resolve questions that courts have struggled with for decades," the Democrats wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "At the same time, we recognize that this legislation is unlikely to become law, or pass through the Senate, in its current form. If that proves true, consumers will be left without enforceable net neutrality protections while partisan conflict continues. We believe this result is unacceptable and unnecessary." The letter to Pelosi was led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Scott Peters (D-Calif.) and signed by another 45 Democratic members of the House. It goes on to suggest that the House create "a bipartisan working group" that would write a net neutrality law that's acceptable to Republican lawmakers.

Microsoft's redesigned SharePoint platform is proof that Microsoft is serious about making their software more stylish. "It's colorful, pretty, and makes SharePoint seem sexy instead of the boring corporate intranet website that most people associate it with," writes The Verge's Tom Warren, in response to Microsoft's latest sizzle video all about SharePoint "innovations." From the report: Microsoft's video also contains the bubbles that form part of the new SharePoint logo -- part of a broader revamp of the company's Office icons that are rolling out right now. It also includes a bunch of Microsoft's Fluent Design elements that form part of the company's big push towards open design internally.

So why did Microsoft make such a flashy video for SharePoint? The company held a SharePoint conference earlier this week and launched a new SharePoint home sites feature. It's a new landing site for a business' intranet that combines news, events, content, video, and even conversations. SharePoint is used by businesses to encourage collaboration, and these new home sites look like a far more modern way to achieve that. Warren notes that Microsoft's newly unveiled Windows Terminal also had a sizzle video that promoted the new design.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly met with Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss to discuss the company's plans to launch its own cryptocurrency. "The Financial Times reported Thursday that Zuckerberg met with the Winklevoss twins and executives with Coinbase, a popular online cryptocurrency exchange, as the company considers partnering with the company and others such as Gemini, the exchange founded by the Winklevoss brothers," reports The Hill. From the report: Zuckerberg's past legal conflict with the twins was one of the defining plot points of "The Social Network," the Academy Award-winning movie based on Zuckerberg's rise to power as Facebook's founder. The two brothers claimed in legal proceedings to have come up with the original idea for Facebook while students at Harvard with Zuckerberg.

At Facebook's developer conference in April, Zuckerberg indicated that he was interested in Facebook becoming a tool for sending money quickly, a feature that would be a core part of the company's entrance into the cryptocurrency realm. "When I think about all the different ways that people interact privately, I think payments is one of the areas where we have an opportunity to make it a lot easier," he said at the conference, according to CNBC. "I believe it should be as easy to send money to someone as it is to send a photo," he reportedly added last month.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs on Security: The Web site for Fortune 500 real estate title insurance giant First American Financial Corp. leaked hundreds of millions of documents related to mortgage deals going back to 2003, until notified this week by KrebsOnSecurity. The digitized records -- including bank account numbers and statements, mortgage and tax records, Social Security numbers, wire transaction receipts, and drivers license images -- were available without authentication to anyone with a Web browser.

Santa Ana, Calif.-based First American is a leading provider of title insurance and settlement services to the real estate and mortgage industries. It employs some 18,000 people and brought in more than $5.7 billion in 2018. Earlier this week, KrebsOnSecurity was contacted by a real estate developer in Washington state who said he'd had little luck getting a response from the company about what he found, which was that a portion of its Web site (firstam.com) was leaking tens if not hundreds of millions of records. He said anyone who knew the URL for a valid document at the Web site could view other documents just by modifying a single digit in the link. And this would potentially include anyone who's ever been sent a document link via email by First American. KrebsOnSecurity confirmed the real estate developer's findings, which indicate that First American's Web site exposed approximately 885 million files, the earliest dating back more than 16 years. No authentication was required to read the documents. "As of the morning of May 24, firstam.com was returning documents up to the present day (885,000,000+), including many PDFs and post-dated forms for upcoming real estate closings," Krebs adds. "By 2 p.m. ET Friday, the company had disabled the site that served the records. It's not yet clear how long the site remained in its promiscuous state."

A spokesperson for the company issued the following statement: "First American has learned of a design defect in an application that made possible unauthorized access to customer data. At First American, security, privacy and confidentiality are of the highest priority and we are committed to protecting our customers' information. The company took immediate action to address the situation and shut down external access to the application. We are currently evaluating what effect, if any, this had on the security of customer information. We will have no further comment until our internal review is completed."