An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: Google will start highlighting reputable developers and publishers with a special badge. Google wrote in an email to Chrome Web Store developers on Friday, "we're happy to announce two new extension badges to help us deliver on that goal: the Featured badge and the Established publisher badge. Both of these badges will appear in the store in the next few weeks. Developers who earn these badges may receive higher rankings in search and filtering, and may also see their extensions appear in special promotions both on and off Chrome Web Store." "Developers who earn these badges may receive higher rankings in search and filtering"

The first is a Featured badge, which "will be granted to extensions that follow our technical best practices and meet a high standard of user experience and design." This badge is given to extensions manually by the Chrome Web Store team, so there isn't a full (public) list of guidelines, but the email mentioned a clear store listing page and following best practices as some of the criteria. The Established publisher badge will be granted automatically to developers and publisher accounts that have been verified and "established a consistent positive track record with Google services and compliance with the Developer Program Policy." In other words, most developers that haven't broke Chrome Web Store rules will probably get the badge at some point.

Google says publishers will not be able to pay money for either badge, but the company is working on ways for developers to request consideration. Starting on April 20, developers will be able to nominate their own extensions for a Featured badge.

In a new study published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers from Harvard and MIT detail work they've done on a "living cellular therapeutic device" that promises to protect humans from the harmful side effects antibiotics can have on our guts. Engadget reports: Per Science Daily, they modified a strain of bacteria that is frequently used in cheese production to deliver an enzyme that can break down beta-lactam antibiotics. Many of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics in the US, including penicillin, fall under that family. Using gene editing, they further modified how their bacterium synthesizes the enzyme to prevent it from transferring that capability to other bacteria. The result is a treatment that reduces the harmful effects of antibiotics while still allowing those drugs to do their work.

In a study involving mice, the researchers found their bacteria "significantly" reduced the damage ampicillin did to the test subject's gut microbes and allowed those communities to recover fully after just three days. By contrast, in mice that only received the antibiotic, the researchers saw a much greater loss of microbial diversity. "We are now focusing on getting these living therapies to patients and are finalizing the design of an effective, short, and inexpensive clinical trial," said Andres Cubillos-Ruiz, the lead author of the study.

After years of trouble and delay, Intel's chipmaking business finally has some good news to report. The most advanced manufacturing process the company has committed to will arrive in the second half of 2024, six months earlier than planned. From a report: Intel fell behind rivals Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Samsung because of problems modernizing its manufacturing, and it convinced chip designer Pat Gelsinger to return to the company as chief executive in 2021. Shortly afterward, Intel laid out a road map that meant five improvements to its manufacturing processes in four years, with manufacturing processes named Intel 7, Intel 4, Intel 8, Intel 20A and Intel 18A. Each step improves a chip's performance relative to its power consumption. Those steps are the foundation of a plan to catch up to rivals in 2024 and surpass them in 2025.

Activision Blizzard will convert all its U.S.-based temporary and contingent quality assurance (QA) positions to full-time jobs, the company announced Thursday. Nearly 1,100 workers will become full-time Activision Blizzard employees, upping pay to at least $20 an hour and allowing QA workers access to bonuses and full benefits. From a report: Activision Publishing chief operating officer and Blizzard Entertainment head Mike Ybarra shared the news with staff Thursday. "Across Activision Blizzard, we are bringing more content to players across our franchises than ever before," an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said in an statement emailed to Polygon. "As a result, we are refining how our teams work together to develop our games and deliver the best possible experiences for our players. We have ambitious plans for the future and our Quality Assurance (QA) team members are a critical part of our development efforts." The conversion of all U.S.-based QA staff to full-time employment increases Activision Publishing's total full-time workforce by 25%.

Olive is the buzzy startup whose purple "go save health care" buses dominate industry conferences. But its promises to save health systems millions of dollars with its automation software don't deliver. Axios reports: An Axios investigation finds that Olive relies on rough estimations for its calculations, inflates its capabilities and, in many cases, generates only a fraction of the savings it pledges. Erin's reporting includes interviews with 16 people, including former and current employees and health tech executives.

Valued at $4 billion by firms like Tiger Global and Vista Equity Partners, Olive is the highest-profile startup in health care automation; a holy grail that promises to cut costs and direct more time toward patient care. In just 10 years, Olive's promise to reduce its clients' administrative spending by roughly 5X the cost of installing the software has garnered the attention of some of the largest health systems in the U.S. Axios' reporting, which includes interviews with 16 people -- including former and current employees, health tech executives and others -- finds Olive is failing to deliver on those promises.

The western United States, "once a beacon for all that was new and hopeful in America, could become an example of the grim, apocalyptic future the nation faces from climate change," writes USA Today. Long-time Slashdot reader Klaxton shares their report: The last five years already have been harrowing. Whole neighborhoods burned down to foundations. Children kept indoors because the air outside is too dangerous to play in. Killer mudslides of burned debris destroying towns. Blood-red skies that are so dark at midday, the streetlights come on and postal workers wear headlamps to deliver the mail.

And it's going to get worse unless dramatic action is taken, two studies published this week forecast.

The first predicts the growth of wildfires could cause dangerous air quality levels to increase during fire season by more than 50% over the next 30 years in the Pacific Northwest and parts of northern California....

The danger stretches across the United States. Wildfire smoke can travel hundreds and even thousands of miles. In July, smoke from Western wildfires triggered air quality alerts and caused smoky skies and red-orange haze in New York, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston.
Meanwhile, a second study "shows how expected increases in wildfires and intense rain events could result in more devastating flash floods and mudslides across a broad portion of the West," the article reports. Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist/dean at the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability, tells the newspaer, "Even climate scientists are scared."

And Bruce Cain, director of Stanford's Bill Lane Center for the American West, hoped the studies would inspire a meaningful response. "It's a kick in the pants to get stuff done."

Ars Technica looks at the "in-space propulsion company" Impulse Space, which just announced $20 million in seed funding this week to help it build something called an "orbital transfer vehicle."

The company was founded by rocket scientist Tom Mueller, who the article describes as the first employee hired by Elon Musk for SpaceX, leading the development of SpaceX's Merlin rocket engine.

Impulse Space is apparently positioning itself for its own role in a future with lots of reusable rockets and cheaper launch costs: Founded last September, Impulse Space will initially seek to provide "last mile" delivery services for satellites launched as part of rideshare missions, likely including on SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.... While the company is not ready to discuss its specific technology, the goal is to deliver the most delta-V capability [velocity from fuel-burning] in the most efficient manner.

Impulse Space released a teaser video on this earlier this month. [The video's title? "Hello, Solar System...!" And it concludes with the words "Big things have small beginings."]

Impulse Space will seek to complement launch services with sustainable delivery in space, using green propellants and having vehicles with de-orbit capability. Barry Matsumori, who recently joined as the company's chief operating officer, said the company recognizes that if tens or hundreds of satellites will be launching on these heavy-lift rockets, they're going to need to reach different orbits and have different purposes... The company's initial business strategy involves low Earth orbit, but it envisions the need for sustainable transportation from the Earth to the Moon — in the form of a tug — and the storage and movement of propellant in both low Earth orbit and the lunar environment.

Once a company mines a space resource, after all, it will have to go somewhere.

"Researchers in the United Kingdom have developed an autonomous, snakelike robot designed to slither down human lungs into places that are difficult for medical professionals to reach," reports the Washington Post.

The tool "could improve the detection and treatment of lung cancer and other pulmonary diseases." In a medical paper released in the journal of Soft Robotics last week, scientists from the University of Leeds unveiled a new "magnetic tentacle robot," which is composed of magnetic discs and is roughly 2 millimeters thick — about double the size of a ballpoint pen tip — and less than a-tenth-of-an-inch long.

In the future, the robot's use could be expanded to help doctors better, and more thoroughly, investigate other organs, such as the human heart, kidney or pancreas, they said....

The robot is still 5 to 10 years away from showing up in a clinical setting, researchers said, but the device comes on the heels of a fleet of other robotic innovations allowing doctors the ability to better scan a patient's lungs for cancerous tissue. They are designed to ease a task doctors have long struggled with: reaching the inner recesses of the human body, for diagnostic and treatment purposes, without causing damage or using invasive procedures.... [I]ts smaller size and magnetic composition would allow it to shape-shift more easily and better navigate the intricate shape of a lung's network of airways, which can look like a tree....

Once at its desired location, the robot could ultimately have the capability to take a tissue sample or deliver a clinical treatment.... Nitish V. Thakor, a professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, said the autonomous robot is "very novel and interesting technology" that could become potentially useful in areas outside the lungs, most notably the heart. The device's autonomous capability is its unique factor, he said, and has the capability to change invasive surgeries. "I can imagine a future," he said, "where a full [cancer-screening] CAT scan is done of the lungs, and the surgeon sits down on a computer and lays out this navigation path of this kind of a snake robot and says: 'Go get it.' "

Genetic testing to predict how individuals will respond to common medicines should be implemented without delay to reduce the risk of side-effects and ensure that everyone is given the right drug at the right dose, experts have said. From a report: About 6.5% of UK hospital admissions are caused by adverse drug reactions, while most prescription medicines only work on 30% to 50% of people. A significant part of this is due to genetics: almost 99% of people carry at least one genetic variation that affects their response to certain drugs, including commonly prescribed painkillers, heart disease drugs and antidepressants. By the age of 70, about 90% of people are taking at least one of these medications.

A new report, published by the British Pharmacological Society and the Royal College of Physicians, argues that many of these issues could be addressed through pharmacogenomic testing, which allows personalised prescribing according to people's genes. "The ultimate goal is to make pharmacogenomic prescribing a reality for everyone within the NHS, which will empower healthcare professionals to deliver better, more personalised care," said Sir Munir Pirmohamed, a professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Liverpool, who chaired the report's working party. "The aim of pharmacogenomics is to make sure patients get the right drug, at the right dose, at the right time to be able to improve their outcomes, treat their symptoms, cure their disease and prevent side-effects."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Decrypt: When a company like Nike finds someone using its brand without permission, it can ask the courts to order the unauthorized goods to be destroyed. Nike has done this in the past, but its latest trademark lawsuit comes with a twist -- the products it wants to "destroy" are NFTs, which are inscribed permanently on the Ethereum blockchain. The case in question involves Detroit-based StockX, a site that lets people buy and sell used brands, including Nike sneakers. [...] In a complaint filed last month in New York federal court, Nike accused StockX of ripping off its brand in order to cash in on a "gold rush market" for NFTs. As a remedy for StockX's alleged infringement of its trademarks, Nike wants the company to turn over its profits and stop the NFT sneaker sales. It also wants a judge to "order that StockX be required to deliver to Nike for destruction any and all Vault NFTs."

According to Alexandra Roberts, a trademark law professor at the University of New Hampshire, it's fairly common for companies to ask to destroy goods that infringe their IP -- there's even a law that entitles them to do that. But whether a court will grant the order is likely to be informed by what the brand owner is looking to destroy. Where do NFTs fit into this? It's an open question since the courts have never had to address it before. And even if the New York court agrees to order the destruction of the StockX NFTs, there's the question of how exactly Nike would go about doing that.

Records on the blockchain show that StockX has indeed inscribed the NFTs on Ethereum, which means they are indestructible except in the extremely unlikely event that developers agree to fork the blockchain to get rid of them. According to some, the most practical thing for Nike to do would be to send the NFTs to a so-called burner wallet. This wouldn't destroy them but still achieve the same purpose: "This means that the best outcome for a brand that is seeking to have NFTs destroyed may be to have them sent to a burn address, which still does not actually destroy them but renders them incapable of being transferred anymore," writes the Fashion Law Blog.

The Biden administration is divided over whether to impose sanctions on Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity giant that officials warn could be used by the Kremlin as a surveillance tool against its customers, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The White House's National Security Council has pressed the Treasury Department to ready the sanctions as part of the broad Western campaign to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, according to officials familiar with the matter. While Treasury officials have been working to prepare the package, sanctions experts within the department have raised concerns over the size and scope of such a move. The company's software is used by hundreds of millions of customers across the world, making it difficult to enforce the sanctions. In addition, some officials in the U.S. and Europe fear sanctioning Kaspersky Lab will increase the likelihood of triggering a cyberattack against the West by Moscow, even potentially leveraging the software itself. It wasn't clear whether the sanctions would go forward, and one official said the idea had been put on hold for now. The debate reflects how agencies within the Biden administration are weighing in real time options to deliver more economic pain to the Russian economy in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

happy monday writes: Dyson has announced its first wearable product that builds the firm's air purification expertise into a set of Bluetooth noise cancelling headphones aimed at city dwellers wanting to avoid polluted air. Quite unlike anything the company has made before, the Dyson Zone is sure to draw quizzical looks. It is a set of large, plush headphones with a plastic mask-type contraption that connects from ear-to-ear across the wearer's mouth and looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. It delivers purified air to the mouth and nose while simultaneously tackling noise pollution through its active noise cancelling technology. Chief engineer Jake Dyson said: "Air pollution is a global problem -- it affects us everywhere we go. In our homes, at school, at work and as we travel, whether on foot, on a bike or by public or private transport. The Dyson Zone purifies the air you breathe on the move. And unlike face masks, it delivers a plume of fresh air without touching your face."

The eyebrow-raising design has a motor, compressor fan and air purifying dual-layer filter in each ear cup. The air is drawn through the filters cleaning it of 99% of particles as small as 0.1 microns, including pollen, bacteria and dust, as well as gas pollutants such as sulphur or nitrogen dioxide. The filtered air is then pushed along the inside of a visor, which sits just in front of the mouth and nose without making contact with the skin, creating a pocket of clean air for the wearer to breathe. The headphones have sensors that detect how fast the wearer is moving, automatically adjusting the airflow between three intensity levels to ensure they deliver up to 5 litres of clean air a second, the equivalent breathing rate of a jog.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Log4Shell vulnerability is being actively exploited to deliver backdoors and cryptocurrency miners to vulnerable VMware Horizon servers. On Tuesday, Sophos cybersecurity researchers said the attacks were first detected in mid-January and are ongoing. Not only are backdoors and cryptocurrency miners being deployed, but in addition, scripts are used to gather and steal device information. Log4Shell is a critical vulnerability in Apache Log4J Java logging library. The unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability was made public in December 2021 and is tracked as CVE-2021-44228 with a CVSS score of 10.0.

According to Sophos, the latest Log4Shell attacks target unpatched VMware Horizon servers with three different backdoors and four cryptocurrency miners. The attackers behind the campaign are leveraging the bug to obtain access to vulnerable servers. Once they have infiltrated the system, Atera agent or Splashtop Streamer, two legitimate remote monitoring software packages, may be installed, with their purpose twisted into becoming backdoor surveillance tools.

The other backdoor detected by Sophos is Silver, an open source offensive security implant released for use by pen testers and red teams. Sophos says that four miners are linked to this wave of attacks: z0Miner, JavaX miner, Jin, and Mimu, which mine for Monero (XMR). Previously, Trend Micro found z0Miner operators were exploiting the Atlassian Confluence RCE (CVE-2021-26084) for cryptojacking attacks. A PowerShell URL connected to this both campaigns suggests there may also be a link, although that is uncertain. [...] In addition, the researchers uncovered evidence of reverse shell deployment designed to collect device and backup information.

"Belarusian railway workers have reportedly cut off all rail connections between their country and Ukraine," reports Germany's public broadcaster DW: Ukrainian railway chief Olexander Kamyshin thanked Belarusian railway workers for this claimed act of sabotage on Saturday. "As of today, I can say there is no rail traffic between Belarus and Ukraine," Kamyshin was quoted as saying by Ukraine's Unian news agency. Kamyshin said that he would not give further details.

Franak Viacorka, advisor to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, tweeted about the incident and said that it had been confirmed by Belarusian railway workers, while declining to provide details.

Although Russia has moved many of its troops and military equipment into Ukraine through Belarus, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has not committed Belarusian troops to the offensive.
A Ukrainian online newspaper claims that "There is no longer a railway connection between Ukraine and Belarus, so the Russian occupiers will not be able to deliver Russian equipment by rail from Belarus," citing the longer televisied remarks of Ukrainian railway chief Olexander Kamyshin: "I believe that these people will be able to prevent Belarusian Railways from transporting military convoys to Ukraine," Kamyshin added.

"Currently, the railways are out of order", Kamyshin confirmed, "so Russian equipment from Belarus will not be able to be delivered."

"Supporting generics has been Go's most often requested feature, and we're proud to deliver the generic support that the majority of users need today," the Go blog announced this week. *

It's part of what Go's development team is calling the "biggest change ever to the language".

SiliconANGLE writes that "Right out of the gate, Go 1.18 is getting a CPU speed performance boost of up to 20% for Apple M1, ARM64 and PowerPC64 chips. This is all from an expansion of Go 1.17's calling conventions for the application binary interface on these processor architectures."

And Go 1.18 also introduces native support for fuzz testing — the first major programming language to do so, writes ZDNet: As Google explains, fuzz testing or 'fuzzing' is a means of testing the vulnerability of a piece of software by throwing arbitrary or invalid data at it to expose bugs and unknown errors. This adds an additional layer of security to Go's code that will keep it protected as its functionality evolves — crucial as attacks on software continue to escalate both in frequency and complexity. "At Google we are committed to securing the online infrastructure and applications the world depends upon," said Eric Brewer, VIP infrastructure at Google....

While other languages support fuzzing, Go is the first major programming language to incorporate it into its core toolchain, meaning — unlike other languages — third-party support integrations aren't required.
Google is emphasizing Go's security features — and its widespread adoption. ZDNet writes: Google created Go in 2007 and was designed specifically to help software engineers build secure, open-source enterprise applications for modern, multi-core computing systems. More than three-quarters of Cloud Native Computing Foundation projects, including Kubernetes and Istio, are written in Go, says Google. [Also Docker and Etc.] According to data from Stack Overflow, some 10% of developers are writing in Go worldwide, and there are signs that more recruiters are seeking out Go coders in their search for tech talent..... "Although we have a dedicated Go team at Google, we welcome a significant amount of contributions from our community. It's a shared effort, and with their updates we're helping our community achieve Go's long-term vision.
Or, as the Go blog says: We want to thank every Go user who filed a bug, sent in a change, wrote a tutorial, or helped in any way to make Go 1.18 a reality. We couldn't do it without you. Thank you.

Enjoy Go 1.18!
* Supporting generics "includes major — but fully backward-compatible — changes to the language," explains the release notes. Although it adds a few cautionary notes: These new language changes required a large amount of new code that has not had significant testing in production settings. That will only happen as more people write and use generic code. We believe that this feature is well implemented and high quality. However, unlike most aspects of Go, we can't back up that belief with real world experience. Therefore, while we encourage the use of generics where it makes sense, please use appropriate caution when deploying generic code in production.

While we believe that the new language features are well designed and clearly specified, it is possible that we have made mistakes.... it is possible that there will be code using generics that will work with the 1.18 release but break in later releases. We do not plan or expect to make any such change. However, breaking 1.18 programs in future releases may become necessary for reasons that we cannot today foresee. We will minimize any such breakage as much as possible, but we can't guarantee that the breakage will be zero.

PowerPoint presentations may change in the next few months, as Microsoft integrates live and pre-recorded video into presentations you view and create. From a report: Microsoft's engineering teams are always hard at work launching features, and today marks Microsoft's spring 2022 update of sorts, on a variety of different subjects. Microsoft announced a new Surface Hub-specific webcam, updated features to Teams and other productivity apps, and some specific improvements to how Microsoft deals with workers who are returning to the office. For that matter, Microsoft also released a survey noting that many workers aren't all that interested in returning to work, either preferring to work remotely or as a hybrid of at-home and in-person work.

PowerPoint touches many different lives and careers (even holiday parties) so it's not surprising that two of the most important announcements involve it. Specifically, Microsoft is merging PowerPoint Cameo with its Recording Studio function, so you'll have more ways to deliver video as part of presentations. PowerPoint Cameo takes an idea that has appeared in mmhmm and other solutions: It captures a small live feed of you talking through your slides, and integrates that with the presentation. All Recording Studio does is simply add the capability to pre-record that video, so you'll have the option of presenting live or pre-recording the video so others can review it on their own time -- as we've seen already happen with the ability to record Teams calls, for example.

The Washington Post shares a story that hasn't been previously disclosed. "Russian agents came to the home of Google's top executive in Moscow to deliver a frightening ultimatum last September: take down an app that had drawn the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin within 24 hours or be taken to prison." Google quickly moved the woman to a hotel where she checked in under an assumed name and might be protected by the presence of other guests and hotel security, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The same agents — believed by company officials to be from Russia's FSB, a successor to the KGB intelligence service — then showed up at her room to tell her the clock was still ticking.

Within hours, an app designed to help Russians register protest votes against Putin could no longer be downloaded from Google or Apple, whose main representative in Moscow faced a similarly harrowing sequence....

The unnerving encounters, which have not previously been disclosed, were part of a broader campaign that Putin intensified last year to erode sources of internal opposition — moves now helping him maintain his hold on power amid a global backlash over the invasion of Ukraine. In a single year, Putin had his political nemesis Alexei Navalny imprisoned after a poisoning attempt failed to kill him; pushed independent news outlets to the brink of extinction; orchestrated a Kremlin-controlled takeover of Russia's Facebook equivalent; and issued "liquidation" orders against human rights organizations.

Amid this internal offensive, Putin also moved to bring foreign technology companies to heel. Moscow deployed new devices that let it degrade or even block Russians' access to Facebook and Twitter, imposed fines totaling $120 million on firms accused of defying Kremlin censors, and ordered 13 of the world's largest technology companies to keep employees in Russia and thus exposed to potential arrest or other punishment for their employers' actions — a measure that U.S. executives refer to as the "hostage law."

On their own, these moves were seen as disparate signs of Russia' descent into authoritarianism. But they also laid the groundwork for the Soviet-style suppression of free expression now underway in Russia, much as the months-long military buildup set the stage for the invasion of Ukraine.
The article also notes "preliminary evidence that the suppression strategy is working. "Polls, whose reliability is always uncertain in Russia, show that a majority of Russians support the war. In interviews with Western journalists that have gone viral online, Russians who rely on state-controlled media have consistently echoed Kremlin falsehoods about eradicating alleged Nazism in Ukraine while seeming to be genuinely oblivious to the war's carnage."

The article also notes how Apple is responding to Ukraine's crisis — but also includes this anecdote: Apple has similarly kept employees in Russia and taken other steps to placate the Kremlin. The company last year began configuring iPhones sold in Russia to promote Kremlin-backed social media companies, enabling users to activate them with a single click. It is an accommodation Apple has rarely made elsewhere and advances Putin's goal of migrating Russian people to platforms controlled by the government, according to Russia analysts.

"People around the world are using a new website to circumvent the Kremlin's propaganda machine by sending individual messages about the war in Ukraine to random people in Russia," reports the Wall Street Journal.

"The website was developed by a group of Polish programmers who obtained some 20 million cellphone numbers and close to 140 million email addresses owned by Russian individuals and companies."

A Tuesday report from the Daily Dot: Created by the hacking group known as Squad303, the tool, hosted at the domain 1920.in, loads a pre-written statement into a user's native SMS app that attempts to inform Russians about the ongoing conflict.

"Dear Russians, your media is being censored. The Kremlin is lying," the statement reads. "Find out the truth about Ukraine on the free internet and in the Telegram app. Time to overthrow dictator Putin!"

In a statement to the Daily Dot, a member of Squad303 described the effort as a "non-violent communication project" aimed at bypassing Russia's crackdown on independent news sources.

The domain name for the tool refers to Poland's surprise victory against Russian forces in 1920.

"We know that people wanted to get engaged to help Ukrainians. We wanted to deliver them a tool to start a dialog with Russians," the group said.... Squad303 claims that its tool has already been used to send out more than 6.3 million text messages, although the Daily Dot was unable to confirm the number.

HBO was hit with a class action lawsuit on Tuesday alleging that it shares subscribers' viewing history with Facebook, in violation of a federal privacy law. Variety reports: A class action law firm, Bursor & Fisher, filed the suit in federal court in New York on behalf of two HBO Max subscribers, Angel McDaniel and Constance Simon. The suit alleges that HBO provides Facebook with customer lists, which allows Facebook to match customers' viewing habits with their Facebook profiles. The suit alleges that HBO never receives consent from subscribers to do this, thereby violating the Video Privacy Protection Act. The act was passed in 1988, after a reporter obtained Robert Bork's rental history from a video store.

The lawsuit argues that HBO knows that Facebook can combine such data because HBO is a major advertiser on Facebook, and it in fact uses that information to retarget Facebook ads to its own subscribers. HBO Max has a privacy policy on its website, in which it discloses that it and its partners use cookies to deliver personalized ads, among other purposes. But the VPPA requires that subscribers give separate consent to share their video viewing history. "In other words," the lawsuit states, "a standard privacy policy will not suffice."

Last week Nvidia confirmed that it had been the victim of an internal hack, though it claimed no customer information was compromised. Now we're seeing one of the first effects of the hack on end-users: Nvidia GPU driver packages with malware hidden inside. PCWorld: While it was always possible for malefactors to host links pretending to be drivers in the hopes of installing viruses, trojans, and other nasty stuff on a user's PC, this situation is more concerning. The hackers appear to have leaked Nvidia's official code signing certificates, a means by which users (and Microsoft) can verify that a downloaded program comes from the publisher it says it's from. That's allowing files containing a host of popular malware suites to be posted and downloaded, bypassing Windows Defender's built-in executable verification and slipping past anti-virus software. BleepingComputer reports that two now-expired (but still usable) verification codes have been compromised and used to deliver remote access trojans. Another example, using the Nvidia verification to sign a fake Windows driver, was also spotted.