California is embarking on a new era of privacy on the internet, and Xavier Becerra can't stop thinking about the failed debut of Obamacare. From a report: Back in 2013, Becerra, then a Democratic congressman from Los Angeles, watched as technical problems with the website marred the rollout of President Barack Obama's signature law, delaying sign-ups for health insurance and denting the public's faith in the new offering. Now, as California's attorney general, Becerra is worried that a similarly halting start awaits the California Consumer Privacy Act, a far-reaching law that would put some of the world's strictest rules on how tech companies -- many of which call the state home -- handle and collect user data.

The rest of the country is watching closely. No other state has attempted such an ambitious privacy law, and since before the dawn of the internet, Congress hasn't either. The law has numerous parts. It forces companies to reveal what data they collect. It gives users the right to delete that data and prevent its sale. And it will likely restrict how data can be used for online ads. Becerra, whose office will be responsible for enforcing the law when it goes into effect Jan. 1, 2020, said he might not have enough staff to carry out the job, and that as a result the law could collapse under its own weight.

Amazon, which is racing to deliver packages faster, is turning to its employees with a proposition: Quit your job and we'll help you start a business delivering Amazon packages. From a report: The offer, announced Monday, comes as Amazon seeks to speed up its shipping time from two days to one for its Prime members. The company sees the new incentive as a way to get more packages delivered to shoppers' doorsteps faster. Amazon says it will cover up to $10,000 in startup costs for employees who are accepted into the program and leave their jobs. The company says it will also pay them three months' worth of their salary. The offer is open to most part-time and full-time Amazon employees, including warehouse workers who pack and ship orders.

Business messaging service Slack briefed investors on Monday, as the company expects to go public with a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange later this year. From a report: The service, which primarily caters to businesses, said it has more than 10 million users as of January. Stewart Butterfield, co-founder and CEO of Slack, made the case to investors that replacing email with Slack changes the way employees of a company communicate. "This shift is inevitable. We believe every organization will switch to Slack or something like it," Butterfield said in a presentation. He also pitched Slack as a software-focused company that believes the world is "only at the beginning" of its reliance on software. In that essence, Butterfield likened Slack as eventually becoming a utility, similar to the internet or electricity.

Amazon is rolling out machines to automate a job held by thousands of its workers: boxing up customer orders. From a report: The company started adding technology to a handful of warehouses in recent years, which scans goods coming down a conveyor belt and envelopes them seconds later in boxes custom-built for each item, two people who worked on the project told Reuters. Amazon has considered installing two machines at dozens more warehouses, removing at least 24 roles at each one, these people said. These facilities typically employ more than 2,000 people. That would amount to more than 1,300 cuts across 55 U.S. fulfillment centers for standard-sized inventory. Amazon would expect to recover the costs in under two years, at $1 million per machine plus operational expenses, they said. The plan, previously unreported, shows how Amazon is pushing to reduce labor and boost profits as automation of the most common warehouse task -- picking up an item -- is still beyond its reach.

"2019 is truly, finally shaping up to be the year of Linux on the desktop," writes PC World's senior editor, adding "Laptops, too!" But most people won't know it. That's because the bones of the open-source operating system kernel will soon be baked into Windows 10 and Chrome OS, as Microsoft and Google revealed at their respective developer conferences this week... Between lurking in Windows 10 and Chrome OS, and the tiny portion of actual Linux distro installs, pretty much any PC you pick up will run a Linux kernel and Linux software. Macs won't, but it's based on a Unix-like BSD system that already runs many Linux apps with relative ease (hence Apple's popularity with developers).

You have to wonder where that leaves proper Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint, though. They already suffer from a minuscule user share, and developers may shift toward Windows and Chrome if the Linux kernels in those operating systems get the same job done. Could this fruit wind up poisonous over the long term? We'll have to see. That said, Linux is healthier than ever. The major distros are far more polished than they used to be, with far fewer hardware woes than installs of yesteryear. You can even get your game on relatively well thanks to Valve's Proton technology, which gets many (but not all) Steam games working on Linux systems. And hey, Linux is free.

Normal users may never be aware of it, but 2019 may finally be the year of Linux on the desktop -- just not Linux operating systems on the desktop.

"Boeing is pushing ahead on a plan to cut about 900 inspectors, replacing their jobs with technology improvements at its Seattle area factories, despite being under fire for software flaws in the 737 Max and quality issues in its other aircraft," reports USA Today.

"The union has raised an outcry, calling it a 'bad decision' that will 'eliminate the second set of eyes on thousands of work packages' in its newsletter to members." Some 451 inspectors will be transferred to other jobs this year, and about the same number next year, out of a total of about 3,000 at its commercial aircraft operations in the Seattle area, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Local 751, has told its members.... When it comes to paring its inspection staff on the West Coast, Boeing says the "QA Transformation Plan" won't undermine safety. Substituting technology gains, it says, will increase quality and effect only "stable" procedures, those in which there is a low probability of mistakes.

For instance, Boeing says when it is bringing out a new aircraft with wings made out of composites, there is equipment now that can do the inspections more thoroughly than humans. Once the inspection equipment has verified that it can do the job -- with humans overseeing the process -- traditional inspectors can be redeployed to other tasks. "As we identify and reduce second-layer inspections for stable processes, quality assurance professionals will be redeployed and take on new roles such as leading and supporting efforts to prevent defects and rework," Boeing said in a statement. It adds that it is working to try to convince regulators and others that the changes "will not jeopardize our quality, but will, in fact, lead to higher levels."

So far, the Federal Aviation Administration hasn't given the plan a ringing endorsement... And skeptics are emerging. Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who lost a niece when the Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed and who believes the 737 Max design is fatally flawed, is leery of substituting machines for people when it comes to quality. "They still haven't learned the lesson that risky automation does not replicate experienced human intelligence," he said. "There is no comparison. There is all kinds of human intuition that can't be translated into computer code."

"Between global warming, Elon Musk, and a worldwide crackdown on carbon, the future looks treacherous for Big Oil," argues CNN Business writer Matt Egan, calling the rise of electric vehicles "an existential threat to the oil industry."

"Passenger vehicles are the No. 1 source of demand for oil -- and tomorrow's transportation system may no longer rely on the gas station." Reliance on oil will probably peak between 2030 and 2035 if countries adhere to their recent low-carbon pledges, Barclays said [in a new report published this week]. However, the peak could arrive as soon as 2025 -- just six years from now -- if the world increases its focus on slashing carbon emissions. Electric vehicle sales have surged faster than anticipated, but they still represent a small portion of overall car sales. That means EVs are hurting oil demand, but they have yet to put a dent in it....

Research firm DNV GL estimates that peak oil will become a reality during the 2020s and demand will flat-line through the entire decade. "By 2030, oil shareholders will feel the impact," said Sverre Alvik, lead author of the firm's energy transition outlook report. Electric vehicles are likely to cause light vehicle oil demand to plunge by nearly 50% by 2040, Alvik said. Jens Peers, an executive at Mirova, an ESG affiliate of Natixis, advised owners of oil stocks to get out while they can. "We do not find them financially attractive today," Peers said, noting "prohibitively high" regulatory and technological risks....

The deep uncertainty surrounding the future of oil demand that long-term investors should use caution in this space by carefully monitoring trends and steering clear of companies that are in denial about the future.

"You heard the headline, surely. Google is giving you privacy. Lots of privacy. Privacy here, there and everywhere. You're free. Rejoice. Leap in the air," writes Inc. columnist Chris Matyszczyk -- arguing that there's one huge and painful catch: Google needs to know everything about you because, as my colleague Bill Murphy Jr. reported, it's after as much of the advertising industry as it can swallow whole. However, Google also needs to look as if it's doing something about privacy, because privacy is the new big thing. Everyone's talking about it and Google is finding itself the subject of more and more lawsuits, as it emerges that the company keeps on tracking you whether you want it to or not.

So what has Google really done with this privacy effort? Yes, it's introduced more privacy and security controls which, in the latest version of Android, might even amount to 50 elements for you to toggle away at. And that is the wicked psychological point. Google is posing to regulators by doing this. It's also putting it entirely in users' hands to work out how all these controls work and what they all mean.

Because it knows the vast majority of users just don't and won't do it.
The column argues that Google "is inviting people to be full-time monitors of what Google may or may not be spying on" -- while at the same time "making sure this is far too much work."

Thursday Facebook's co-founder called for the government to break up the company. Saturday Facebook responded, according to an article shared by Slashdot reader soldersold: Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president for global affairs and communications wrote the piece, and in it, he agrees with Hughes that "companies should be held accountable for their actions," and that tech companies such as Facebook shouldn't be the ones handling all of the "important social, political and ethical questions" for the internet. But he notes that breaking Facebook up -- as Hughes calls for -- would be the wrong way to go. "The challenges he alludes to," Clegg writes, "including election interference and privacy safeguards, won't evaporate by breaking up Facebook or any other big tech company...." Zuckerberg also responded to the op-ed while in France, saying that "my main reaction was that what [Hughes is] proposing that we do isn't going to do anything to help solve those issues."

Notably, Clegg sidesteps what's probably the op-ed's main focus: Zuckerberg himself. Hughes notes that while the CEO is a good person, he holds far too much power at Facebook, and can't be held accountable there -- he calls the shots. "The government must hold Mark accountable," Hughes wrote.
The article also notes that Clegg "pushed back" against the argument that Facebook is a dominant monopoly, by "saying that its revenue only makes up 20 percent of the advertising marketplace..."

"He goes on to reiterate many of Facebook's regular talking points: that it's been a net-positive for the world by connecting everyone, allowing businesses to thrive and people to raise lots of money for important causes around the world."

"Microsoft has very quietly confirmed the death of Windows 10 passwords this week," claims Forbes -- though I think they may be overstating things a bit: Microsoft's crypto, identity and authentication team group manager, Yogesh Mehta, has made an announcement that he says puts "the 800 million people who use Windows 10 one step closer to a world without passwords...."

Mehta confirmed that with the release of the forthcoming Windows 10 May update, Windows Hello becomes a fully FIDO2 certified authenticator... [Windows Hello is "a biometrics-based technology that enables Windows 10 users to authenticate secure access to their devices, apps, online services and networks with just a fingerprint, iris scan or facial recognition."]

So does the arrival of FIDO2 certification for Windows 10 mean that passwords are now dead? Not quite. The death of the password for Window 10 could yet be a lingering and painful one. "We encourage companies and software developers to adopt a strategy for achieving a passwordless future and start today by supporting password alternatives such as Windows Hello," Mehta says, before admitting that to arrive in this future requires "interoperable solutions that work across all industry platforms and browsers."

I say painful, by the way, as there will no doubt be no shortage of stories about password security fails until the final nail is hammered into this authentication coffin.

"This will probably be the first fully 'un-Googled' Android-based smartphone to hit the market ever," writes Slashdot reader getupstandup1: The /e/ smartphone will start to ship soon, on high-grade refurbished smartphones. While more and more people are concerned about privacy, it's interesting to see such initiatives, especially considering that it was started by someone who is coming from the Linux distro world.
Gaël Duval started this non-profit project after realizing "he was more and more using proprietary software -- Apple and Android," and "felt trapped inside those Internet giants' ecosystems that use personal data to fuel their business models," according to the /e/ web site.

"We think that /e/ can have a global, worldwide impact as a major open source project in the public interest. It will help by freeing users from personal data spying and advertising. /e/ is about freedom and privacy in the digital world."

They're now asking interested phone-buyers to "register" their interest in one of their high-grade refurbished (Samsung) smartphones "by clicking on the button located underneath your smartphone of choice, and leaving your contact details so we can come back to you when these phones will be available."

"It has become too easy to take Linux and FOSS for granted," warns a Linux Journal editorial by Doc Searls, complaining, for example, that today "We collaborate inside proprietary environments, such as Slack and Google Hangouts."

Long-time Slashdot reader whh3 wants to live differently -- and to model a different set values: After reading the recent Doc Searls article in Linux Journal, I realized that I need to get back to my roots. The first step will be to build/setup/run my own email server for my vanity domain.

The problem is, I haven't run my own email server since the 90s. It was easy back then -- there was much less SPAM and self-hosted email servers didn't have to jump through hoops to make sure that they weren't blacklisted as senders.

So, I am reaching out to this great community to find out if there are any good tutorials on modern-day best-practices for self hosting an email server. Any tips/tricks/pointers would be great appreciated!
A lot's changed in 20 years -- but for such a basic form of online communication, is it still possible to roll your own? Or are we trapped in a world where private conversations about valuing open source software take place inside Google's proprietary Gmail client.

Leave your own suggestions in the comments. How would you host your own email server?

Mark Wilson writes: Microsoft is bringing back PowerToys for Windows 10 — and this time it is open source. If the name doesn't mean anything to you, you probably weren't a Windows 95 user, but if this was your computing era, you'll remember tinkering with the likes of TweakUI, Send to X, QuickRes and numerous other delightful utilities.

Now the collection of utilities is back, rebooted for Windows 10 and due to be released as an open source project. At the moment, there are two tools being worked on — a "maximize to new desktop" widget, and the Windows-key [keyboard] shortcut guide — but ten more are under consideration and due for release this summer.

wiredmikey quotes SecurityWeek: The Russia-linked threat group known as Turla has reportedly been using a sophisticated backdoor to hijack Microsoft Exchange mail servers, ESET reported... The malware, dubbed LightNeuron, allows the attackers to read and modify any email passing through the compromised mail server, create and send new emails, and block emails to prevent the intended recipients from receiving them. According to ESET, LightNeuron has been used by Turla — the group is also known as Waterbug, KRYPTON and Venomous Bear — since at least 2014 to target Microsoft Exchange servers. The cybersecurity firm has analyzed a Windows version of the malware, but evidence suggests a Linux version exists as well.

CBS News calls TikTok "the first major contender since Snapchat to possibly disrupt a market dominated by social media behemoth Facebook.

"The mere three-year-old startup even comes with a history of data-privacy controversies." Created by China start-up ByteDance in 2016, TikTok has already been downloaded over 1 billion times globally, surpassing both Facebook and Instagram in app installs last year, according to analytics site Sensor Tower.... It's also more than just a plucky tech start-up. ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is the single largest start-up in the world, surpassing Uber in valuation with $78 billion. It has funding from some of the world's highest-profile investors, including Japanese conglomerate SoftBank (also an investor in Uber). However, TikTok has already come under fire from government regulators and parents for data-privacy concerns and what some critics call predatory practices on the app regarding children. And additional concerns were raised this week by data rights advocate David Carroll, an associate professor of media design whose 2017 lawsuit against Cambridge Analytica indirectly led to a January criminal conviction of the administrators of Cambridge Analytica in the UK. If the cataclysmic scandal taught us anything, it was that some of the secrets of the data trade wars are buried in the fine print no one reads. In preparation for when my kids begin asking about the hugely popular lip-sync app TikTok, I dug into its privacy policy and its recent revisions. If you joined TikTok before 2019, what I found should worry you... Having learned the crucial lesson of data sovereignty through my experiences with Facebook's favorite democracy-destabilizing personality quiz, I'm now hyper-sensitized to the question of where our personal data ends up... I did the thing that almost no one does: I read their privacy policy. I was alarmed to see this section, which in late 2018 stated that TikTok user data may be transferred to China.
This discovery leads him to one inevitable question. "Is TikTok a Chinese Cambridge Analytica data bomb waiting to explode?"

A new study published in the journal Science Advances suggests that, from 2010 to 2016, cars driving for the ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft were making traffic worse in the San Francisco. The new findings echo those of another study of New York City. An anonymous reader shares a report from Science Magazine: A comparison of traffic speeds from 2010, before ride-sharing apps were widely used, with 2016 shows the time cars spent sitting in San Francisco traffic increased by 69%. To find out how much of that was caused by ride-sharing vehicles, researchers used [a computer model that simulated the speed of traffic with Uber and Lyft vehicles removed] to forecast what traffic might have been like in 2016 without Uber or Lyft.

To do this, the authors needed to know how many additional cars Lyft and Uber were putting on the streets. When the companies refused to share this information, researchers used a program that had thousands of "ghost users" ping the Uber and Lyft apps every 5 seconds for 6 weeks in 2016, revealing the locations of nearby drivers -- and how many were on the streets at any given time. The model closely predicted the real-life traffic seen in 2010 and, after plugging in the Uber and Lyft driver data, 2016. The researchers then used the model to envision 2016 traffic minus the cars driving for Uber and Lyft. Without those cars, the model estimated just a 22% increase in traffic delays from 2010-16, suggesting ride-sharing companies were responsible for more than half of San Francisco's real-world traffic increase. The remainder of San Francisco's traffic increase was accounted for by growth in population and employment, which grew by roughly 70,000 people and 150,000 jobs respectively.

Ars Technica's Kyle Orland reports that Brazilian ROM hacker Vitor Vilela has released a ROM patch for the hit arcade game Gradius III, creating a new, slowdown-free version of the game for play on SNES emulators and standard hardware. "In magazine screenshots, the game's huge, colorful sprites were a sight to behold, comparable to the 1989 arcade original," writes Orland. "In action, though, any scene with more than a handful of enemies would slow to a nearly unplayable crawl on the underpowered SNES hardware." From the report: The key to Vilela's efforts is the SA-1 chip, an enhancement co-processor that was found in some late-era SNES cartridges like Super Mario RPG and Kirby Super Star. Besides sporting a faster clock speed than the standard SNES CPU (up to 10.74 Mhz versus 3.58 Mhz for the CPU), SA-1 also opens up faster mathematical functions, improved graphics manipulation, and parallel processing capabilities for SNES programmers.

The result, as is apparent in the comparison videos embedded here, is a version of Gradius III that Vilela says runs two to three times faster than the original. It also keeps its silky smooth frame rate no matter how many detailed, screen-filling sprites clutter the scene. That's even true in the game's notorious, bubble-filled Stage 2, which is transformed from a jittery slide show to an amazing showcase of the SNES' enhanced power. As if that wasn't enough, the patch even slashes the game's loading times, cutting a full 3.25 seconds from the notably slow startup animation. Vilela notes that the lack of slowdown "makes it incredibly super difficult" and even suggests that "some arcade segments of the game do not look RTA (real-time action) viable with SA-1. But we shouldn't underestimate the human capabilities."

dryriver shares a report from the BBC: Delta Airlines is facing significant criticism after posters discouraging its staff from joining a union were widely shared online. "Union dues cost around $700 a year," one of the posters states. "A new video game system with the latest hits sounds like fun. Put your money towards that instead of paying dues to the union," it continued. The posters point to a website featuring Delta branding which encourages workers not to unionize. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), which claims to represent more than 110,000 airline employees in the United States, is attempting to organize union representation for 44,000 Delta employees.

"Delta Airlines' all-out assault on their employees' legally-protected right to unionize with the Machinists Union is confirmation that our campaign to bring the benefits of IAM-representation is succeeding," it said in a statement. "The day when Delta ramp workers and flight attendants will finally be able to bargain for the compensation, benefits and work rules they deserve is coming quickly, and that has Delta terrified."

sciencehabit writes: Scientists have been studying the social intelligence of dogs -- how they evolved to communicate and bond with us -- for more than two decades, but they've largely ignored cats. That has started to change. In the past five years, a number of laboratories exploring feline social cognition have popped up around the globe, revealing that cats rival dogs in many tests of social smarts. But cats are hard to work with -- they freak out in the laboratory and often don't cooperate even when researchers study them in their homes -- causing some to wonder whether studies of the feline mind will take off the same way they have for dogs. Oregon State University devised an "attachment test" where an owner and his/her cat will go into a room for a moment, and then the owner will leave. The cat will typically tend to freak out, meow a lot, and walk around in circles until the owner comes back. When the owner comes back and sits down on the ground, often the cat will come back to the owner.

What's particularly interesting about this study is that the cat, after welcoming its owner and recognizing their presence, will then leave and start exploring the room. While the average person would assume that the cat doesn't care about their owner since they appear to just want to explore, it's the opposite that's true. The cat has such a close bond with their owner that they feel they're able to go explore now that their owner is there with them.

They also do a similar test with a fan that has streamers attached to it. With the fan on making loud noise and freaking out the cat, the owner is instructed to "make nice" with the fan. After making sweet talk and touching the fan, some cats will start to calm down, approach the fan, and even lay down in front of it. The cats appear to pick up the emotional cues from their owners and learn that the fan is not something that they should be afraid of.

itwbennett writes: At the Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam this week, researchers Peter Bosch and Trammell Hudson presented a new attack against the Boot Guard feature of Intel's reference UEFI implementation, known as Tianocore. The attack, which can give an attacker full, persistent access, involves replacing a PC's SPI flash chip with one that contains rogue code, reports Lucian Constantin for CSO. "Even though such physical attacks require a targeted approach and will never be a widespread threat, they can pose a serious risk to businesses and users who have access to valuable information," writes Constantin. Intel has patches available for Tianocore, but as we all remember from the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, distributing UEFI patches isn't an easy process.