An anonymous reader shares a report: WhatsApp is working on a major new feature to tackle the spread of misinformation on its service. The Facebook-owned chat app is internally testing a new option that would allow a user to quickly verify the legitimacy of images they have received on WhatsApp by checking if those images had ever appeared on the web before. [...] The unnamed feature relies on Google's reverse image search function to let WhatsApp users upload an image and find where it has appeared on the web. This is a clever solution by WhatsApp, which protects all messages and media content on its platform with end-to-end encryption. While hugely beneficial to end users, using encryption also significantly curtails WhatsApp's ability to scan the content of messages and media on its platform. In emerging markets, users are exhibiting a growing appetite for sharing information through images. In places like India, WhatsApp's largest market and where the service is grappling with the spread of false information, the feature could potentially help many users quickly verify facts and get more context about the image they have received.

A new study from researchers at Columbia University in New York suggests future spaceships could use black holes as powerful launch pads to explore the universe. The study "envisions firing laser beams that would curve around a black hole and come back with added energy to help propel a spacecraft to near the speed of light," reports Space.com. "Astronomers could look for signs that alien civilizations are using such a 'halo drive,' as the study dubs it, by seeing if pairs of black holes are merging more often than expected." From the report: Study author David Kipping, an astrophysicist at Columbia University in New York, came up with the idea of the halo drive through what he calls "the gamer's mindset." Using what he called a "halo drive" -- named for the ring of light it would create around a black hole -- Kipping found that even spaceships with the mass of Jupiter could achieve relativistic speeds. "A civilization could exploit black holes as galactic waypoints," he wrote in a study accepted by the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and detailed online Feb. 28 in the arXiv preprint server.

The major drawback of a halo drive would be that "one has to travel to the nearest black hole," Kipping said. "It's akin to paying a one-time toll fee to ride the highway system. You have to pay some energy to reach the nearest access point, but after that, you can ride for free as a long as you like." The halo drive works only in close proximity to a black hole, at a distance of about five to 50 times the black hole's diameter. "This is why you have to travel to the nearest black hole first and [why you] can't simply do this across light-years of space," Kipping said. "We still first require a means to travel to nearby stars to ride the highway system. Kipping is now investigating ways to exploit other astronomical systems for relativistic flight. Such techniques "may not be quite as efficient or fast as the halo-drive approach, but these systems possess the deep energy reserves needed for these journeys," Kipping said.

Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has introduced legislation that would allocate millions of dollars for local government to create dedicated teams that could "update and rebuild" government systems. The Verge reports: The United States Digital Service, an office established in 2014 after the widespread failures of Healthcare.gov, provides IT support for the federal government, bringing technologists into the government to work on tools like federal websites. It's continued to operate under the Trump administration, and some states, Harris' office notes, have experimented with similar teams. Harris' bill, the Digital Service Act, would provide an annual $50 million to the federal service, but it also goes further, allocating $15 million per year to state and local governments to create similar teams.

Harris' bill, the Digital Service Act, would provide an annual $50 million to the federal service, but it also goes further, allocating $15 million per year to state and local governments to create similar teams. Under the plan, the national Digital Service would offer two-year grants, giving state and local governments between $200,000 and $2.5 million per year. Those governments would be required to take on 20 percent of costs and to spend at least half of the money on talent, rather than tech. The national Digital Service, under the proposal, would report bi-annually to Congress on the progress of the grantees. The bill would provide funding through 2027.

The state of Vermont has agreed to suspend enforcement of its net neutrality law pending the outcome of a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission. In October 2018, five industry groups representing major internet providers and cable companies sued Vermont seeking to block a state law barring companies that do not abide by net neutrality rules from receiving state contracts. But, as Ars Technica reports, "the lobby groups and state agreed to delay litigation and enforcement of the Vermont law in a deal that they detailed in a joint court filing yesterday." From the report: The delay will remain in place until after a final decision in the lawsuit seeking to reverse the FCC's net neutrality repeal and the FCC's preemption of state net neutrality laws. Vermont is one of 22 states that sued the FCC in that case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Tech companies and consumer advocacy groups are also opposing the FCC in the same case. Oral arguments were held last month, and DC Circuit judges will likely issue a decision in the coming months.

An FCC loss in that case could entirely restore federal net neutrality rules, potentially making the Vermont law redundant. But a partial loss for the FCC could leave the federal repeal in place while allowing states to enforce their own net neutrality laws. The Vermont delay would remain in place until after all appeals are exhausted in the FCC case, which could potentially reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Coal is the primary fuel source for Midwest electric utilities. Michigan Technological University researchers found that increasing renewable and distributed generation energy sources can save Michigan electric consumers money. As renewable energy technologies and access to distributed generation like residential solar panels improve, consumer costs for electricity decrease. Making electricity for yourself with solar has become more affordable than traditional electricity fuel sources like coal. However, as three Michigan Tech researchers contend in a new study, while utility fuel mixes are slowly shifting away from fossil fuels toward renewable sources, Michigan utilities, and U.S. utilities broadly, continue a relationship with fossil fuels that is detrimental to their customers.

In the paper, Prehoda and co-authors Joshua M. Pearce, Richard Witte Endowed Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Chelsea Schelly, associate professor of sociology, note that in the U.S., "70 percent of coal plants run at a higher cost than new renewable energy and by 2030 all of them will." The researchers provide a breakdown of savings per kilowatt hour by county that Michigan residents could achieve if they produce their own electricity with solar photovoltaic panels. The most significant impacts of distributed generation with solar are in the Upper Peninsula, where residential customers could see savings of approximately 7 cents per kilowatt hour. Assuming the average residential consumer uses 600 kilowatt hours of electricity monthly, this is a savings of $42 per utility bill. Downstate, the average savings per utility bill under the researchers' model is approximately $30 monthly. However, not all Michigan consumers can take advantage of the opportunity to self-generate, as some utilities are blocking additional net-metered distributed generation in their areas. The study has been published in the journal Energies.

Researchers from Checkpoint Software have identified a massive adware campaign that invaded the Google Play Store with more than 200 highly aggressive apps that were collectively downloaded almost 150 million times. "The 210 apps discovered by researchers from security firm Checkpoint Software bombarded users with ads, even when an app wasn't open," reports Ars Technica. "The apps also had the ability to carry out spearphishing attacks by causing a browser to open an attacker-chosen URL and open the apps for Google Play and third-party market 9Apps with a specific keyword search or a specific application's page. The apps reported to a command-and-control server to receive instructions on which commands to carry out." From the report: Once installed, the apps installed code that allowed them to perform actions as soon as the device finished booting or while the user was using the device. The apps also could remove their icon from the device launcher to make it harder for users to uninstall the nuisance apps. The apps all used a software development kit called RXDrioder, which Checkpoint researchers believe concealed its abusive capabilities from app developers. The researchers dubbed the campaign SimBad, because many of the participating apps are simulator games.

"With the capabilities of showing out-of-scope ads, exposing the user to other applications, and opening a URL in a browser, SimBad acts now as an Adware, but already has the infrastructure to evolve into a much larger threat," Checkpoint researchers wrote. The top 14 apps were collectively downloaded a whopping 75 million times, with the No. 1 app receiving 10 million installs and the next 13 getting 5 million downloads each. The next 53 each received 1 million downloads. The remainder received 500,000 or fewer downloads each. Checkpoint has a full list of all the apps here.

Last night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company's brand new electric SUV, the Model Y. The car is only slightly larger than the Model 3 and shares 75% of its parts, leaving many people wanting more. But, as USA Today reports, "The ho-hum reaction to Tesla's new electric SUV is, oddly enough, exactly what the company needs. [F]or a company that needs a little less pizzazz and a little more substance to make good on its promise to become a sustainable force in the auto industry, the Model Y hit the right marks." From the report: It's essentially a crossover version of the Tesla Model 3 compact car, bearing the design hallmarks of a hatchback and sharing the same architectural platform as its car sibling. That Tesla devotees weren't rewarded with sizzling new features on the Model Y illustrates that the company is getting serious about selling vehicles. After all, a compact SUV is precisely what Americans want: a driveable vehicle that puts safety first and flash second. Versions with five and seven seats will be available, with starting prices ranging from $39,000 for the base version to $60,000 for a performance model. If Musk had tried to break new technological barriers or adopt outlandish styling on the Model Y, he would have risked making the vehicle too difficult to manufacture and unappealing to conventional SUV buyers.

The first-available model will start at $47,000 and arrive in fall 2020. You can place a refundable deposit of $2,500 to secure your place in line when the vehicle becomes available. The base model of the Model Y -- the $39,000 version -- won't be available until "sometime in 2021," Musk said. Families can make the Model Y their primary vehicle since the battery range goes from 230 miles to 300 miles depending on the version. That stacks up well against other EVs on the market, such as the Chevrolet Bolt's 238 and the Hyundai Kona's 258. And while techies might not find the Model Y exhilarating, it will come equipped with software and sensors capable of autonomous driving, whenever it becomes legal. But buyers will have to pay for the system upgrade of $3,000 to $5,000.

Apple violated three Qualcomm patents and should pay the chipmaker $31 million for infringing on its technology, a jury decided Thursday, giving Qualcomm momentum as it heads into another legal skirmish with the iPhone maker next month. From a report: Qualcomm, which filed the suit in July 2017, alleged Apple had used its technology without permission in some versions of its popular iPhone. The jury awarded Qualcomm the full amount it requested at the start of the two-week trial, which was held in San Diego. One disputed Qualcomm patent covers technology that lets a smartphone quickly connect to the internet once the device is turned on. Another deals with graphics processing and battery life. The third addresses technology that shifts traffic between a phone's apps processor and modem. The $31 million in damages -- or $1.41 per infringing iPhone -- is a drop in the bucket for Apple, a company that briefly became a $1 trillion company last year. But it marks an important victory for Qualcomm, burnishing its reputation as a mobile components innovator. The win also lends credibility to the notion that much of the company's innovation is reflected in iPhones.

Bolstering privacy is one of the primary focuses for Google in Android Q, the latest version of its mobile operating system, and that may spell trouble for some of your favorite apps. From a report: In Android Q, Google has restricted access to clipboard data as previously rumored, which means most apps that currently aim to manage that data won't work anymore. Having an app that sits in the background and collects clipboard data can be a handy way to recall past snippets of data. However, that same mechanism could be used for malicious intent. Google's playing it safe by restricting access to clipboard data to input method editors (you might know those as keyboards). Foreground apps that have focus will also be able to access the clipboard, but background apps won't.

If you thought the European Commission was done hitting Google with massive fines, think again. From a report: Having already whacked the U.S. company with a $2.7 billion fine in 2017 (for disadvantaging comparison-shopping rivals in its search results) and a $5 billion fine last year (for disadvantaging software rivals in the Android ecosystem,) the Commission will reportedly issue another financial penalty next week. The fine's imminent nature was reported Friday by the Financial Times, citing three unnamed sources. The Commission and Google both declined to provide comment on the report. It is all about Google's restrictions on the "AdSense for Search" boxes that third-party websites use to make it easier for users to search their sites. Searches conducted through the boxes bring up Google ads and, with Google having such a dominant position in the European online search advertising market, the Commission warned the company in 2016 that it believed the company was illegally abusing its position.

One thing you might not know about Beto O'Rourke, the former Texas congressman who just entered the race for president is that while a teenager, O'Rourke acknowledged in an exclusive interview to Reuters, he belonged to the oldest group of computer hackers in U.S. history. From the report: The hugely influential Cult of the Dead Cow, jokingly named after an abandoned Texas slaughterhouse, is notorious for releasing tools that allowed ordinary people to hack computers running Microsoft's Windows. It's also known for inventing the word "hacktivism" to describe human-rights-driven security work.

Members of the group have protected O'Rourke's secret for decades, reluctant to compromise his political viability. Now, in a series of interviews, CDC members have acknowledged O'Rourke as one of their own. Slashdot interviewed members of the Cult of the Cow in 1999 -- which gave bizarre answers.

WordPress now powers over 1/3rd of the top 10 million sites on the web, according to W3Techs. From a blog post: Our market share has been growing steadily over the last few years, going from 29.9% just one year ago to 33.4% now. We are, of course, quite proud of these numbers! The path here has been very exciting. In 2005, we were celebrating 50,000 downloads. Six years later, in January 2011, WordPress was powering 13.1% of websites. And now, early in 2019, we are powering 33.4% of sites. Our latest release has already been downloaded close to 14 million times, and it was only released on the 21st of February.

It started 29 weeks ago when 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg began skipping school on Fridays to protest climate change by standing outside of her nation's parliament building. Today, kids from more than 110 countries, including the United States, are following Thunberg's lead and will play hooky from classes for something they think is ultimately more important: preventing the warming of their planet. Live updates, from The Guardian. Further reading: Thousands of scientists are backing the kids striking for climate change.

Facebook said on Friday it would use AI to combat the spread of intimate photos shared without people's permission, sometimes called "revenge porn," on its social networks. From a report: The new technology is in addition to a pilot program that required trained representatives to review offending images. "By using machine learning and artificial intelligence, we can now proactively detect near nude images or videos that are shared without permission," the social networking giant said in a blog post. "This means we can find this content before anyone reports it." A member of Facebook's community operations team would review the content found by the new technology, and if found to be an offending image, remove it or disable the account responsible for spreading it, the company added.

Apple has responded to Spotify's European Commission (EC) complaint. In a press release, the company said that Spotify "seeks to keep all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem ... without making any contributions to that marketplace." It added that the App Store has generated $120 billion for developers while offering users a secure platform, and that Spotify is seeking to side to sidestep the rules that every other app follows. From a report: "Spotify has every right to determine their own business model, but we feel an obligation to respond when Spotify wraps its financial motivations in misleading rhetoric about who we are," the company wrote. Spotify's main argument was that Apple's own music service, Apple Music, isn't subject to the same restrictions of its own app. "[A]pps should be able to compete fairly on the merits, and not based on who owns the App Store," wrote CEO Daniel Ek. "We should all be subject to the same fair set of rules and restrictions -- including Apple Music." It added that Apple had often stymied it on app updates and locked it out of Apple services, "such as Siri, HomePod and Apple Watch." Finally, it noted that Apple had blocked communication with its own customers on things like special offers. In response, Apple addressed each complaint point by point, while criticizing Spotify's treatment of musicians and artists. It said that it has approved nearly 200 app updates, and "the only time we have requested adjustments is when Spotify has tried to sidestep the same rules that every app follows."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: How to fund ethical journalism in the Facebook era is the multi-billion dollar question of the hour, and a technology-focused consumer group by the name of Free Press believes it has a solution. The group has unveiled a new proposal that suggests taxing all online targeted advertising, then using that money to fund the nation's struggling news empires, big and small. The program would apply a 2 percent tax on companies generating more than $200 million in annual targeted-ad revenues, then use that money to create a "Public Interest Media Endowment." The $2 billion collected annually would then be managed by the government itself, or an outside, existing institution such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Such a tax would most obviously apply to both social media giants, but also the giant telecom monopolies increasingly trying to elbow their way into the online ad space. This endowment, in turn, would help fund local journalism, investigative reporting, media literacy, noncommercial social networks, civic-technology projects, and "news and information for underserved communities," suggests the group. "The problem for journalism is that Facebook and Google control nearly 70 percent of this marketplace," Free Press Director Tim Karr told Motherboard via email. "And neither are news organizations. In fact, only one of the top ten digital advertisers in the U.S. (Verizon Media Group/Oath) is in the news business (HuffPost, Techcrunch), and then only partially so."

Huawei has built its own operating system for phones, tablets and computers in case tensions between Huawei and the U.S. escalate even further than they already are. "The OS has been rumored for years, but Huawei confirmed its viability with the South China Morning Post, saying it could be used if the company were cut off from Android or Windows," reports Engadget. "It's seen as a last resort, but given the current discord between the U.S. and Huawei, it's not entirely surprising that the company has a plan B." From the report: Huawei began building the OS in 2012, after the U.S. banned Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE from using American products and services. This was reportedly seen as a way to prepare for "worst-case scenarios." Now, with Huawei suing the U.S. government and the U.S. saying it might punish Germany if the country works with Huawei on its 5G networks, those worst-case scenarios might not be too far-fetched. At the moment, this doesn't change much. Android and Windows are still the company's first-choice. "We fully support our partners' operating systems -- we love them and our customers love them," a company spokesperson told South China Morning Post. Still, given the state of the U.S.-Huawei relationship, this contingency plan could be significant.

Google is shutting down its Spotlight Stories immersive entertainment unit, according to an email sent out by Spotlight Stories executive producer Karen Dufilho Wednesday evening. "Google Spotlight Stories is shutting its doors after over six years of making stories and putting them on phones, on screens, in VR, and anywhere else we could get away with it," Dufilho said in her email sent to supporters of the studio. Variety reports: Spotlight Stories originally began as a group within Motorola, tasked with exploring the future of storytelling for mobile devices. The group then became part of Google's Advanced Technologies and Products (ATAP) group, and went on to produce a number of 360-degree videos and VR experiences with creators like Glen Keane, Justin Lin, Jorge Gutierrez and Aardman Animation, the makers of "Wallace and Gromit." "Pearl," a Spotlight Story from Patrick Osborne, the director of Disney's Oscar-nominated short film "Feast," was nominated for an Academy Award, and won a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Programming in 2017. Most recently, Spotlight Stories released "Age of Sail," an animated short film directed by Oscar-winning animator John Kahrs.

Google is said to have invested significant amounts of money into Spotlight Stories over the years, without giving the group a mandate to monetize their works. However, while Spotlight Stories films pushed the medium forward, the group didn't necessarily improve the fortunes of Google's VR efforts, with the company struggling to find an audience for its Daydream VR headset. A Google spokesperson said in a statement to Variety: "Since its inception, Spotlight Stories strove to re-imagine VR storytelling. From ambitious shorts like 'Son of Jaguar,' 'Sonaria' and 'Back to The Moon' to critical acclaim for 'Pearl' (Emmy winner and first-ever VR film nominated for an Oscar) the Spotlight Stories team left a lasting impact on immersive storytelling. We are proud of the work the team has done over the years." A source with knowledge of the situation told Variety that staffers were given a chance to look for new positions within the company. Most artists who had been working on projects for Spotlight Stories were thought to be contractors on a by-project basis.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A push to launch a high-level study of potentially risky technological fixes to curb climate change was abandoned on Thursday at a U.N. environmental conference in Nairobi, as countries including the United States raised objections. "Geoengineering" technologies, which are gaining prominence as international efforts to curb climate-changing emissions fall short, aim to pull carbon out of the atmosphere or block some of the sun's warmth to cool the Earth. They could help fend off some of the worst impacts of runaway climate change, including worsening storms and heatwaves, backers say. But opponents argue the emerging technologies pose huge potential risks to people and nature, and could undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not least because many are backed by fossil-fuel interests. Observers at the U.N. Environment Assembly in Nairobi said the Swiss-backed proposal was rejected in part because it called for a "precautionary principle" approach to geoengineering the climate. That principle says great care must be taken in starting activities that have unclear risks for human health or the environment. The United States, Saudi Arabia and Brazil were among the strongest opponents of the proposal, with Japan also expressing reservations.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Robotic hands have a tough time getting a grip on pliable objects, but it's not for lack of trying -- most make do with rigid pincers that aren't designed for precision grasping. Fortunately, if a newly published paper is any indication, more versatile systems are on the horizon. In it, researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Harvard describe a novel gripper design that's capable of lifting items in a range of weights, shapes, and sizes.

The team's hollow, cone-shaped gripper comprises three parts -- a 3D-printed, 16-piece silicone rubber skeleton with a gripper-to-mount connector encased by an airtight skin -- that together collapse in on objects as opposed to clutching them. It was inspired by the "magic ball," an origami design that's folded from a rectangular piece of paper pre-creased with a repeating, offset pattern that reversibly changes between a spherical and cylindrical shape. The gripper is powered by a pneumatic vacuum and covered by either a 27-inch latex rubber balloon or a TPU-coated nylon fabric sheet, depending on the configuration. The researchers tested three: one with a self-folded fabric skin skeleton, a second with a rubber-molded skeleton, and a third with a tougher rubber skeleton.

[...] In one experiment where the team mounted the gripper on a robot to test its strength, it managed to lift and grasp objects -- 12 food items, 19 different bottles and cups, and 14 miscellaneous items, some weighing over four pounds -- that were 70 percent of its diameter and up to 120 times its weight without damaging them. It currently works best with cylindrical objects like bottles and cans, according to Shuguang Li, a joint postdoctoral student at MIT CSAIL and Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), which makes it a natural fit for factory production lines.