ConsenSys, the company behind the MetaMask crypto wallet, said Tuesday it will release a series of updates to the platform in response to user backlash regarding its data-collection practices. From a report: In a statement, the company explained how and why it was sharing MetaMask user internet-protocol information with Infura, the ConsenSys-made RPC (remote procedure call) service for reading and writing data to the Ethereum blockchain. A change in wording to the ConsenSys user agreement last month revealed that MetaMask, by default, shared users' transaction data with Infura alongside their IP addresses. The revelation sparked outrage in a vocal corner of the crypto community, with some users worrying aloud that their transaction data wasn't as private as they assumed.

In its statement, ConsenSys clarified that it would only "collect wallet and IP address information in connection with 'write' requests, also known as transactions, when MetaMask users broadcast transactions through Infura's RPC endpoints." "We do not store wallet account address information when a MetaMask user makes a 'read' request through Infura, for example in order to check their account balances within MetaMask," the company said. According to MetaMask co-founder Dan Finlay, the platform began collecting and sharing IP-linked transaction data with Infura in 2018 to prevent network overload and to monitor pending transactions. Finlay said MetaMask cannot stop logging IP addresses entirely; if a user interacts with an RPC service like Infura, their IP address will always be visible. ConsenSys, however, will stop logging user IP information directly alongside their transaction data, thereby making it more difficult for the firm to trace transaction activity back to specific users. ConsenSys said it will also make updates to the MetaMask interface.

"The powerful Webb telescope doesn't need to take pretty pictures to revolutionize our grasp of the cosmos," notes Mashable.

It's "a game changer," says one of the researchers. They're part of what the Webb telescope's web site calls "an international team numbering in the hundreds" that "independently analysed data from four of the Webb telescope's finely calibrated instrument modes." And their ground-breaking first results? The James Webb Space Telescope "just scored another first: a molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world's skies."

The European Space Agency's page for the telescope explains why revealing a "broad swath of the infrared spectrum and a panoply of chemical fingerprints" is so groundbreaking: While Webb and other space telescopes, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this heated planet's atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds.... The telescope's array of highly sensitive instruments was trained on the atmosphere of WASP-39 b, a "hot Saturn" (a planet about as massive as Saturn but in an orbit tighter than Mercury) orbiting a star some 700 light-years away.... Webb's exquisitely sensitive instruments have provided a profile of WASP-39 b's atmospheric constituents and identified a plethora of contents, including water, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, sodium and potassium.
Earlier Mashable explained that the researchers "wait for planets to travel in front of their bright stars. This starlight passes through the exoplanet's atmosphere, then through space, and ultimately into instruments called spectrographs aboard Webb... essentially hi-tech prisms, which separate the light into a rainbow of colors. Here's the big trick: Certain molecules, like water, in the atmosphere absorb specific types, or colors, of light."

From the Webb Telescope's site: The findings bode well for the capability of Webb's instruments to conduct the broad range of investigations of exoplanets — planets around other stars — hoped for by the science community. That includes probing the atmospheres of smaller, rocky planets like those in the TRAPPIST-1 system.... Among the unprecedented revelations is the first detection in an exoplanet atmosphere of sulphur dioxide, a molecule produced from chemical reactions triggered by high-energy light from the planet's parent star.... "This is the first time we have seen concrete evidence of photochemistry — chemical reactions initiated by energetic stellar light — on exoplanets," said Shang-Min Tsai, a researcher at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and lead author of the paper explaining the origin of sulphur dioxide in WASP-39 b's atmosphere. "I see this as a really promising outlook for advancing our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres...."

This led to another first: scientists applying computer models of photochemistry to data that require such physics to be fully explained. The resulting improvements in modelling will help build the technological know-how needed to interpret potential signs of habitability in the future.... The planet's proximity to its host star — eight times closer than Mercury is to our Sun — also makes it a laboratory for studying the effects of radiation from host stars on exoplanets. Better knowledge of the star-planet connection should bring a deeper understanding of how these processes affect the diversity of planets observed in the galaxy.

Other atmospheric constituents detected by the Webb telescope include sodium (Na), potassium (K), and water vapour (H2O), confirming previous space- and ground-based telescope observations as well as finding additional fingerprints of water, at these longer wavelengths, that haven't been seen before. Webb also saw carbon dioxide (CO2) at higher resolution, providing twice as much data as reported from its previous observations....

By precisely revealing the details of an exoplanet atmosphere, the Webb telescope's instruments performed well beyond scientists' expectations — and promise a new phase of exploration of the broad variety of exoplanets in the galaxy. "We are going to be able to see the big picture of exoplanet atmospheres," said Laura Flagg, a researcher at Cornell University and a member of the international team. "It is incredibly exciting to know that everything is going to be rewritten. That is one of the best parts of being a scientist."
Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency.

Somewhere in Silicon Valley is a man "standing up to internet giants Comcast and AT&T," reports the Mercury News. (Alternate URL here.)

"Comcast told him it would cost $17,000 to speed up his internet. He rallied 41 South Bay neighbors to build their own lightning-fast fiber-optic network instead " Tech-rich but internet-poor, residents of the Silicon Valley neighborhood were fed up with sluggish broadband speeds of less than 25 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload — the federal definition of a home unserved by adequate internet. Frustrated by the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of internet providers, they created their own solution — and now this tony enclave has one of the fastest residential speeds in the nation.

Scott Vanderlip, a software engineer, said Comcast gave him a $17,000 estimate to connect his home to the faster internet service at a neighbor's home. "You got to be kidding me — I can see it on the pole from my driveway," Vanderlip said, remembering his reaction to Comcast's quote.

So the self-described "town rebel" jumped at the chance to partner with a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks. If Vanderlip could rally a few neighbors willing to invest a couple thousand dollars, Next Level would get them very fast internet. That was in 2017. Now, Vanderlip is president of the Los Altos Hills Community Fiber Association, which provides super-fast speeds — up to 10 Gigabits-per-second upload and download — to its over 40 association members, letting them transfer huge files and load webpages in the click of a computer mouse, Vanderlip said.

That's 125 times faster than the median download speed in Santa Clara County.
It helped that his home "also happened to sit near a local school with a spare fiber optic internet connection," the article points out.

But a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks also handled "the infrastructure procurement, contracts, logistics and retail — essentially providing the residents a turnkey fiber optic internet service — while Vanderlip and two of his neighbors, who joined with an investment of $5,000 each, bought the fiber optic infrastructure, crowdsourced new members and mapped out an initial fiber route to their houses."

Thanks to Slashdot reader k6mfw for sharing the story!

NVIDIA has responded to a class action lawsuit over melting RTX 4090 GPU adapters. The Verge reports: Weeks after Nvidia announced that it was investigating reports that the power cables for its RTX 4090 graphics card were melting and burning, the company says it may know why: they just weren't plugged in all the way.

In a post to its customer support forum on Friday, Nvidia says that it's still investigating the reports, but that its findings "suggest" an insecure connector has been a common issue. It also says that it's gotten around 50 reports of the issue.

Nvidia's flagship card uses what's known as a 12VHPWR power connector, a new standard that isn't natively supported by most of the power supplies that people already have in their PCs. Because of that, it ships an adapter — or "power dongle," as Friday's post calls it — in the box. Users' initial reports blamed the adapter, with some saying that the melting cable had damaged their $1,599 GPU as well....

GamersNexus, an outlet that's respected in the PC-building community for its rigorous testing, basically came to the same conclusion earlier this week. A video posted on Wednesday by the outlet, which inspected damaged adapters sent in by viewers and done extensive testing and reporting on the issue, showed that the connectors had wear lines, implying that they hadn't been completely inserted into the slot. GamersNexus even says that some people seem to have missed a full connection by several millimeters. Its video shows that a loose connection could cause the plug to heat up dramatically, if it were plugged in poorly and tilted at an angle..... [A]n unnamed spokesperson for the company told GamersNexus on Friday that "any issues with the burned cable or GPU, regardless of cable or GPU, it will be processed" for a replacement.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for submitting the article.

Microsoft has released SQL Server 2022, the latest version of its database software, which originally launched more than 33 years ago. From a report: Microsoft describes this release as the "most Azure-enabled release of SQL Server yet" and with connections to Azure Synapse Link for enabling real-time analytics over the database, Azure Purview for data governance and disaster recovery with the help of Azure SQL Managed Instance, this release is, in many ways, the culmination of the cloud-connection groundwork the team started quite a few years ago. "From the very beginning, the vision [for SQL Server] really was about -- databases were very complex -- how do you make that extremely simple? And in many ways, I think that has been a key reason why it lasted for so long and how we've evolved it as well," Rohan Kumar, Microsoft's corporate VP for Azure Data, told me. "One of the big things that I think about with SQL Server 2022 is that we've made it completely cloud-connected to Azure."

He noted that while the migration of on-prem workloads is happening, Microsoft's customers are all moving at very different speeds and some, for a multitude of reasons, may never move to the cloud at all. That, he argues, is why the company always bet on a hybrid approach, but it is also why a lot of customers started asking about how they could get the value of being in the cloud without actually having to move all of their data to it. "That was really the key thesis of why we invested in making this into a cloud release," Kumar said. A good example here is the new disaster recovery function that allows users to replicate their data in SQL Managed Instance on Azure and use that as a backup for their main on-premises SQL Server, which should make it easy to fail over to that when the main server goes down.

Kaspersky is stopping the operation and sales of its VPN product, Kaspersky Secure Connection, in the Russian Federation, with the free version to be suspended as early as November 15, 2022. BleepingComputer reports: As the Moscow-based company informed on its Russian blog earlier this week, the shutdown of the VPN service will be staged, so that impact on customers remains minimal. Purchases of the paid version of Kaspersky Secure Connection will remain available on both the official website and mobile app stores until December 2022. Customers with active subscriptions will continue to enjoy the product's VPN service until the end of the paid period, which cannot go beyond the end of 2023 (one-year subscription).

Russian-based users of the free version of Kaspersky Secure Connection will not be able to continue using the product after November 15, 2022, so they will have to seek alternatives. BleepingComputer emailed Kaspersky questions regarding its decision to stop offering VPN products in Russia, but a spokesperson has declined to provide more information. Russia's telecommunications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, announced VPN bans in June 2021 and then again in December 2021. "The reason for banning 15 VPNs in the country was because their vendors refused to connect their services to the FGIS database, which would apply government-imposed censorship in VPN connections, and would also make user traffic and identity subject to state scrutiny," reports BleepingComputer.

"Ever-increasing controls are strangling VPN usage in Russia. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Digital Transformation requested all state-owned companies to declare what VPN products they use, for what purposes, and in what locations."

Department of Justice, announcing through a press release: Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Tyler Hatcher, the Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, Los Angeles Field Office ("IRS-CI"), announced today that JAMES ZHONG pled guilty to committing wire fraud in September 2012 when he unlawfully obtained over 50,000 Bitcoin from the Silk Road dark web internet marketplace. ZHONG pled guilty on Friday, November 4, 2022, before United States District Judge Paul G. Gardephe.

On November 9, 2021, pursuant to a judicially authorized premises search warrant of ZHONG's Gainesville, Georgia, house, law enforcement seized approximately 50,676.17851897 Bitcoin, then valued at over $3.36 billion. This seizure was then the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice and today remains the Department's second largest financial seizure ever. The Government is seeking to forfeit, collectively: approximately 51,680.32473733 Bitcoin; ZHONG's 80% interest in RE&D Investments, LLC, a Memphis-based company with substantial real estate holdings; $661,900 in cash seized from ZHONG's home; and various metals also seized from ZHONG's home.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: "James Zhong committed wire fraud over a decade ago when he stole approximately 50,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road. For almost ten years, the whereabouts of this massive chunk of missing Bitcoin had ballooned into an over $3.3 billion mystery. Thanks to state-of-the-art cryptocurrency tracing and good old-fashioned police work, law enforcement located and recovered this impressive cache of crime proceeds. This case shows that we won't stop following the money, no matter how expertly hidden, even to a circuit board in the bottom of a popcorn tin."

Manual transmissions are "the ultimate driver-car connection," argues the chief marketing manager for Nissan's Z sports car, "where you really feel like a part of the vehicle and can control it in ways you wouldn't be able to with an automatic." He tells ABC News that "As long as there are still new internal combustion engine vehicles on the market, there will be an interest in manual transmissions."

Ah, but isn't that just another way of saying that "It's inevitable EVs are going to take over and people are getting misty-eyed that the manual won't be around forever." That what Bob Sorokanich, editor-in-chief of Jalopnik, tells ABC: "That's why people are flocking to these specialty cars. Young people are interested in the opportunity to experience them as internal combustion engines come to a close...."

The car community has been decrying the death of the manual transmission for nearly two decades, said Henry Catchpole, a longtime automotive journalist who now hosts videos for Hagerty. As more automakers allocate resources to building electric vehicles, drivers are choosing engagement over pure performance, he argued. "People are reassessing what they want and are going back to analog cars. It's a big story in the industry," he told ABC News. "There's a shift in terms of how we look at performance cars. We don't wax lyrical about paddle shifters as we do about manual gearboxes. Drivers are enjoying the manual again...."

Catchpole said the unrelenting pressure on automakers to keep the manual alive has benefited an industry that's rapidly closing the door on gas-powered vehicles. "Some people see manuals as a chore but they're not. They bring more color to life," he said. "Porsche listened to enthusiasts and brought back the manual in the GT3. I hope other manufacturers will listen too."
"Porsche, Acura, Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Honda, and even Ford continue to make models which have manual transmissions," writes Slashdot reader quonset.

"In some cases it is the only option."

T-Mobile may be joining rivals Verizon and AT&T by introducing an $35 charge for all new postpaid activations and upgrades, according to The T-Mo Report and some Redditors. Engadget: According to T-Mobile internal documents, it's introducing a "Device Connection Charge" for "all activations and upgrades for mobile, Beyond the Smartphone and broadband devices." Before, the Uncarrier charged activation fees only if you received in-store customer support for new activations, with online orders exempt. Now, all new postpaid activations are charged, whether or not you were assisted. This includes updating to a new device, adding a Bring-Your-Own-Device line, or ordering a Home Internet line, according to The T-Mo Report. T-Mobile has always tried to separate itself from regular telecoms, but charging customers for essentially nothing doesn't sound very Uncarrier-like, if the reports are accurate. And you can't take your business to Sprint, as it no longer exists thanks to its merger with T-Mobile. When that deal was finalized, T-Mobile said things would be "better for customers," but constant activation charges would definitely not be better.

Black holes have properties characteristic of quantum particles, a new study reveals, suggesting that the puzzling cosmic objects can be at the same time small and big, heavy and light, or dead and alive, just like the legendary Schrodinger's cat. Space.com reports: The new study, based on computer modeling, aimed to find the elusive connection between the mind-boggling time-warping physics of supermassive objects such as black holes and the principles guiding the behavior of the tiniest subatomic particles. The study team developed a mathematical framework that placed a simulated quantum particle just outside a giant simulated black hole. The simulation revealed that the black hole showed signs of quantum superposition, the ability to exist in multiple states at once -- in this case, to be at the same time both massive and not massive at all.

The best known example of quantum superposition is the legendary SchrÃdinger's cat, a thought experiment designed by early 20th century physicist Erwin Schrodinger to demonstrate some of the key issues with quantum physics. According to quantum theories, subatomic particles exist in multiple states simultaneously until they interact with the external world. This interaction, which could be the simple act of being measured or observed, throws the particle into one of the possible states. Schrodinger, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933, intended the experiment to demonstrate the absurdity of quantum theory, as it would suggest that a cat locked in a box can be at the same time dead and alive based on the random behavior of atoms, until an observer breaks the superposition. However, as it turned out, while a cat in a box could be dead regardless of the observer's actions, a quantum particle may indeed exist in a double state. And the new study indicates that a black hole does as well. The new study was published online in the journal Physical Review Letters on Friday.

TuSimple, a self-driving trucking company, said Monday it had fired its chief executive and co-founder, Xiaodi Hou. From a report: The San Diego-based company said in a news release and securities filing that its board of directors on Sunday had ousted Mr. Hou, who was also the board chairman and chief technology officer. Mr. Hou was fired in connection with a continuing investigation by members of the board, the release said. That review "led the board to conclude that a change of Chief Executive Officer was necessary," the company said in the release.

The securities filing said that the board's investigation found that TuSimple this year shared confidential information with Hydron, a trucking startup with operations mostly in China and funded by Chinese investors. The filing also said that TuSimple's decision to share the confidential information hadn't been disclosed to the board before TuSimple entered into a business deal with Hydron. TuSimple said it didn't know whether Hydron shared, or publicly disclosed, the confidential information, the securities filing said. WSJ, reporting on Sunday: TuSimple faces federal investigations into whether it improperly financed and transferred technology to a Chinese startup, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The people said the concurrent probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Securities and Exchange Commission and Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., known as Cfius, are examining TuSimple's relationship with Hydron, a startup that says it is developing autonomous hydrogen-powered trucks and is led by one of TuSimple's co-founders.

Investigators at the FBI and SEC are looking at whether TuSimple and its executives -- principally Chief Executive Xiaodi Hou -- breached fiduciary duties and securities laws by failing to properly disclose the relationship, the people familiar with the matter said. They are also probing whether TuSimple shared with Hydron intellectual property developed in the U.S. and whether that action defrauded TuSimple investors by sending valuable technology to an overseas adversary, the people said.

Long-time Slashdot reader UnderAttack writes: IoT devices are often stitched together from various odd libraries and features. The SANS Internet Storm Center has a story about a cat feeder that not only appears to reach out to Baidu.com every five minutes but also uses a vulnerable DNS library that uses repeating query ids allowing for simple spoofing not seen since the early dark years of DNS
The article, by a SANS.edu dean of research, concludes that "Some networking libraries use 'baidu.com' for internet connectivity checks. Even if the DNS lookup succeeds, there is no actual outbound connection in this case. The device is happy as long as an IP address is returned."

According to Protocol, Amazon and Google have struck a deal in recent months that allows Fire TV models to be produced by Android TV partners. From the report: As a result of that deal, Amazon has been able to work with a number of consumer electronics companies -- including not only TCL, but also Xiaomi and Hisense -- to vastly expand the number of available smart TVs running Fire TV OS. All of these companies were previously barred from doing so under licensing terms imposed by Google. The agreement may also alleviate some of the pressure Google has been feeling as regulators around the world have investigated its Android platform. However, some experts are skeptical a singular deal will address the overarching concerns with Google's operation and licensing of Android to third parties.

The deal between Amazon and Google resolves a yearslong dispute over licensing restrictions Google imposes on hardware manufacturers that make Android-based phones, TVs, and other devices. In order to gain access to Google's officially sanctioned version of Android as well as the company's popular apps like Google Maps and YouTube, manufacturers have to sign a confidential document known as the Android Compatibility Commitment. The ACC prevents manufacturers from also making devices based on forked versions of Android not compatible with Google's guidelines. The ACC, which was previously known as the Anti-Fragmentation Agreement, had long been an open secret in industry circles. Its full impact on the smart TV space became public when Protocol reported terms of the agreement in March of 2020 and outlined how the policy effectively barred companies like TCL from making smart TVs running any forked version of Android, including Amazon's Fire TV OS.

Google has been justifying these policies by pointing to the harmful consequences of Android fragmentation, positing that the rules assured developers and consumers that apps would run across all Android-based devices. However, the crux of Google's requirements is that they apply across device categories. By making a Fire TV-based smart TV, TCL would have effectively risked losing access to Google's Android for its smartphone business -- a risk the company, and many of its competitors that develop both smartphones and TVs, weren't willing to take. At the time, both Google and Amazon declined to comment on the dispute. However, Amazon was a lot more forthcoming when it talked to Indian regulators for a wide-ranging probe into Google's Android policies. "Given the breadth of the anti-fragmentation obligations, Amazon has also experienced significant difficulties in finding [original equipment manufacturer] partners to manufacture smart TVs running its Fire OS," the company's Indian subsidiary told regulators in a submission that was included in last week's report. Amazon told regulators that "at least seven" manufacturers had told the company they weren't able to make Fire TV-based smart TVs because of Google's restrictions.

"In several cases, the OEM has indicated that it cannot work with Amazon despite a professed desire to do so in connection with smart TVs," Amazon said in its submission. "In others, the OEM has tried and failed to obtain 'permission' from Google."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Cartridges and discs used to be how you got the latest games, but that's been changing as downloads have become more convenient and reliable. But some people prefer the sure thing: a physical copy, so they can play offline or with a bad connection. To them, Activision says "qq": the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II disc is basically just a link to a 150-gigabyte download. Now, to be fair, games that size don't fit neatly on even high capacity Blu-ray discs, which for distribution purposes max out at around 50 gigs. Not that we haven't seen multi-disc games before (I never finished Final Fantasy VIII because the final disc was scratched someday, Edea), but clearly Activision decided it wasn't worth the bother in this case. [...] Far from having the full game on it, the disc is almost completely empty. This 72-megabyte app is basically just an authenticator and shell that initiates the enormous download process. I'd be willing to bet that most of those 72 megabytes are 4K video files of logos. There's even a pre-order steelbook bonus (that's a metal case for the disc and anything else it comes with). Players may be disappointed to find that this fancy reinforced packaging protects nothing of value.

Obviously there is great waste entailed in the production of perhaps millions of discs (though the numbers are likely much lower than they used to) for no reason. But waste is endemic in consumerism. The bait and switch of it is the galling thing -- that Activision is taking the worst of both worlds. There's literally no point in even providing a physical version of the software if none of the reasons for doing so are fulfilled by it. It's the equivalent of the next season of Stranger Things coming on a disc that just loads up Netflix and starts streaming. Why bother? It's worth asking whether Activision could have built a version of the game that fit on a disc at all. Considering how proudly they've been advertising the realism of the graphics, probably not. A single 4K texture unit, say for a building front or character model, may be scores of megabytes, and any AAA game will have countless such textures. Meanwhile the audio and video assets also have to fit on there, and they can only be compressed so far before they degrade.

Alphabet's Google has agreed to improve its compliance program in a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which said the search giant lost data federal investigators sought in connection with a probe into a cryptocurrency exchange. From a report: The DOJ said Tuesday that a third-party independent compliance professional will monitor whether Google holds up its end of the deal. Under the agreement, Google will be required to reform and upgrade the compliance program that handles responses to legal demands such as subpoenas and search warrants.

Google estimates it has already spent more than $90 million on systems and staffing to improve the program, and prosecutors have agreed a penalty isn't warranted, according to a settlement document filed in San Francisco federal court. "Google has a long track record of protecting our users' privacy, including pushing back against overbroad government demands for user data, and this agreement in no way changes our ability or our commitment to continue doing so," a Google representative said.

Apple snuck a nice little surprise in its round of Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV updates yesterday with the addition of support for Nintendo's updated classic game controllers. From a report: As spotted by developer Steve Troughton-Smith and confirmed by MacStories, Nintendo's modern SNES and N64 controllers now work with updated Apple devices with macOS 13, iOS 16, and tvOS 16 and up, whether using a wired or Bluetooth connection. While neither MacStories nor Troughton-Smith was able to test whether the Sega Genesis and NES controllers work with Apple's devices, we're assuming Apple added the same functionality.

The US unsealed charges claiming two Chinese intelligence officers tried to obstruct a criminal investigation of Huawei , and alleged others were working on behalf of a "foreign power" to try procure technology and recruit spies. Bloomberg reports: The charges were part of a series of recently unsealed cases the Justice Department announced Monday that officials said had disrupted criminal activity being conducted by the People's Republic of China. Ten of the 13 individuals charged were Chinese intelligence individuals, according to FBI Director Chris Wray. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco added that the case involving alleged obstruction of a US probe of a telecommunications company -- which the DOJ wouldn't identify -- exposes the connection between the Chinese government and its companies. She said the telecom giant tried to "unlawfully gain an edge" to undermine the US investigation, and shows why Chinese companies shouldn't be trusted to handle the personal data of Americans.

In a complaint made public Monday, the US claims Guochun He and Zheng Wang worked on behalf of the Chinese government to target the US, from 2019 until the present, for the benefit of the company. A person familiar with the matter confirmed it is Huawei. The US claims He and Wang bribed a law enforcement employee to provide what they believed was confidential information about witnesses, evidence and possible additional charges to be filed against the technology giant. He paid the employee $61,000 in Bitcoin, according to the criminal complaint. In a separate action, four people were charged in federal court in New Jersey with conspiracy to act as an illegal agent of a foreign government. The conspiracy allegedly involved Chinese intelligence officers posing as academics to recruit US law enforcement workers and others in seeking help procuring fingerprint technology and equipment for the US. They also allegedly pressured one former official to stop protests in the US along the 2008 Olympic torch route, according to court filings.

In addition, the Justice Department announced that seven people from China were charged in an indictment unsealed in the Eastern District of New York last week with conspiring to harass a Chinese citizen living in the US in hopes of causing the person to return. The actions were allegedly part of an effort by China, called "Operation Fox Hunt," to force the repatriation of alleged fugitives living in other countries. In the case involving the Huawei probe, the complaint includes conversations between He and Wang and a US government employee working as a double agent under supervision of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They were using an encrypted messaging program that is not identified.

The Washington Post spotlights millions of workers newly allowed to work remotely since the pandemic — including the head of Block's global policy partnerships who moved to a tiny town in Michigan to be closer to her grandfather. And on the plus side, there's a 34-year-old who "has spent the last two years jet-setting across Spain, Italy, Greece and her motherland of Romania. She's also thrown herself into road cycling..."

Remote workers say they enjoy connecting with nature, exploring the world and spending more time with family, noting that their outlook on work has changed forever. But it's not rosy all the time: Some say their new lifestyles have introduced complications like time-zone coordination, a different approach to connecting with colleagues, slow internet connectivity, the fear of missing out in-person, and sorting out international health care and travel restrictions....

Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and co-CEO of Australian software company Atlassian, moved to a farm two hours south of the company's Sydney headquarters.... "We decided that ... nobody had to come back to an office," he said. "That reduced pressure." For Cannon-Brookes, allowing his employees to work from anywhere seemed to make the most sense. But he admits Atlassian had to do a lot of retooling to make the policy functional. It had to adjust salaries based on location, coordinate time zones so that teams could work together, create moments for in-person interactions and recruit in areas it hadn't explored. While it's still working social connection, Atlassian now has a larger hiring pool and happier employees, he says. And many got to be with family. "There's a number of people who've sent beautiful, tearful messages, especially older employees who have worked awhile and realized how unusual this is," he said.

Atlassian software developer Christina Bell, 27, says the change allowed her to keep her job to spend time with her grandmother, who was diagnosed with cancer, in her homeland of New Zealand. "We went to the beach, did puzzles together, had quality time," she said of her grandmother who was an early supporter of her engineering interests. "In a good twist of events, my nana is in remission, and she's still with us a year and a half later. I'm making the most of our time." Quality time with family is a common thread among several workers who moved thanks to new work policies....

Some workers found relief leaving their cities for nature. That was the case for Naomi Barnett of Spotify and Helen Prowse of Block.... Tempe, Ariz., resident Devin Miller, who works in Yelp's people operations department, says the permanent shift to remote work made room for a new ritual: occasionally working from a cabin in the mountainous town of Pinetop-Lakeside, Ariz. There, he can watch a herd of elk parade across the front yard and take a conference call from a swinging hammock — assuming his internet signal isn't weak. "It's a total refresh for both of us," he said, referring to his partner.

"Being stuck in our house put a lot of pressure on our relationship."

Canonical blog: Codenamed "Kinetic Kudu," this interim release improves the experience of enterprise developers and IT administrators. It also includes the latest toolchains and applications with a particular focus on the IoT ecosystem. Ubuntu 22.10 delivers toolchain updates to Ruby, Go, GCC and Rust. OpenSSH in Ubuntu 22.10 is configured by default to use systemd socket activation, meaning that sshd will not be started until an incoming connection request is received. This reduces the memory footprint of Ubuntu Server on smaller devices, VMs or LXD containers. Ubuntu 22.10 also comes with a new debuginfod service to help developers and admins debug programs shipped with Ubuntu. Debugging tools like gdb will automatically download the required debug symbols over HTTPS.

Ubuntu 22.10 now supports MicroPython on a variety of microcontrollers, including the Raspberry Pi Pico W. rshell, thonny and mpremote are all available in the Ubuntu repositories. The Ubuntu graphics stack transition to kms means developers can run Pi-based graphical applications using frameworks like Qt outside of a desktop session and without Pi specific drivers. This complements expanded support for a range of embedded displays for the Raspberry Pi, including the Inky eInk HAT series, Hyperpixel range and the Raspberry Pi Official Touchscreen. [...] All users will benefit from the refinements in GNOME 43, including GTK4 theming for improved performance and consistency. Quick Settings now provide faster access to commonly used options such as wifi, bluetooth, dark mode and power settings.