"Amazon is tired of ringing doorbells," reports the Associated Press. "The online shopping giant is pushing landlords around the country — sometimes with financial incentives — to give its drivers the ability to unlock apartment-building doors themselves with a mobile device." The service, dubbed Key for Business, is pitched as a way to cut down on stolen packages by making it easy to leave them in lobbies and not outside. Amazon benefits because it enables delivery workers to make their rounds faster. And fewer stolen packages reduce costs and could give Amazon an edge over competitors. Those who have installed the device say it reduces the constant buzzing by delivery people and is a safer alternative to giving out codes to scores of delivery people.

But the Amazon program, first announced in 2018, may stir security and privacy concerns as it gains traction. The company said that it does background checks on delivery people and that they can unlock doors only when they have a package in hand to scan. But tenants may not know that Amazon drivers have access to their building's front doors, since Amazon leaves it up to the building to notify them...

Amazon didn't respond to questions about potential hacking. The company has already installed the device in thousands of U.S. apartment buildings but declined to give a specific number... Amazon salespeople have been fanning out to cities across the country to knock on doors, make cold calls or approach building managers on the street to urge them to install the device. The company has even partnered with local locksmiths to push it on building managers while they fix locks. Amazon installs the device for free and sometimes throws in a $100 Amazon gift card to whoever lets them in.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: During the depths of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic, cars sat idly in driveways, city streets were deserted, onetime commuters worked from bed -- and it was much, much easier to find a parking spot. All of which was devastating news for the small cadre of tech startups dedicated to helping people find and reserve places to park. For SpotHero, which makes an app that helps drivers locate parking spaces, business was down 90% in April 2020 compared with February. The company laid off half its employees. "It was a really hard time for us," Chief Executive Officer Mark Lawrence says. Now, at last, drivers are back, and so is the familiar American pastime of hunting for a parking spot. In the U.S., traffic was up 55% in April from a year earlier, according to the Federal Highway Administration. And although urban roads were slower to refill than their suburban counterparts, traffic in such cities as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C., finally touched pre-pandemic levels again in June, according to Inrix, which analyzes mobility data.

The result has been a wave of new customers for SpotHero and companies like it. SpotHero bookings started to come back in January, then accelerated. "It was slowly, then suddenly," Lawrence says. Now the startup is profitable for the first time in 10 years, he says, thanks in part to a surge in car ownership spurred by people avoiding public transit. At FlashParking, which makes two spot-finding apps and helps event companies and garages coordinate availability, demand is higher than it was before the pandemic in some cities. Meanwhile, SpotAngels, which uses crowd input to create maps of nearby open spaces, says monthly revenue since its previous high in February 2020 had tripled by May 2021. "It's interesting to see how dark it was, and can get," SpotHero's Lawrence says, "and then have such optimism now."

Before the pandemic, the industry was in crisis, says Eran Ben-Joseph, a professor of urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking. The rise of such ride-sharing services as Uber and Lyft had meant that many parking garages at stadiums and the like were forced to retrofit their spaces for other uses, such as mini-distribution centers for packages. Post-pandemic, though, parking companies are benefiting from a renewed love of personal space. "I do think right now there's a little bit of a psychological issue with taking public transit or taking Uber," Ben-Joseph says. He also thinks parking apps in particular may be benefiting from the lack of desire to touch kiosk screens or hand over cash to an attendant.

The CEO of NSO Group, whose spyware tools have reportedly been used to target journalists and activists, says that people who aren't criminals shouldn't be afraid of being surveilled AppleInsider reports: Shalev Hulio, 39, recently spoke to Forbes after investigations indicated that NSO Group's Pegasus spyware was used by authoritarian governments to hack and surveil the mobile devices of world leaders, high-profile journalists, and activists. NSO Group says that it sells its tools to governments to help them catch serious criminals like terrorists or gangsters. However, Hulio admitted that it can't control what governments ultimately do with the tools. "We are selling our products to governments. We have no way to monitor what those governments do," he said.

Hulio did note that NSO Group has mechanisms in place to detect when abuse happens so that the company can "shut them down." He says that NSO Group has "done it before and will continue to do so. On the other hand, he said that NSO Group shouldn't be responsible for government misuse. Additionally, Hulio said that the average smartphone has nothing to worry about. While NSO Group's spyware can break into the latest iPhones running up-to-date software, often without any action from the user, it's only aimed at criminals. "The people that are not criminals, not the Bin Ladens of the world -- there's nothing to be afraid of. They can absolutely trust on the security and privacy of their Google and Apple devices," Hulio said.

According to a new study, malware can be embedded directly into the artificial neurons that make up machine learning models in a way that keeps them from being detected. The neural network would even be able to continue performing its set tasks normally. Motherboard reports: "As neural networks become more widely used, this method will be universal in delivering malware in the future," the authors, from the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, write. Using real malware samples, their experiments found that replacing up to around 50 percent of the neurons in the AlexNet model -- a benchmark-setting classic in the AI field -- with malware still kept the model's accuracy rate above 93.1 percent. The authors concluded that a 178MB AlexNet model can have up to 36.9MB of malware embedded into its structure without being detected using a technique called steganography. Some of the models were tested against 58 common antivirus systems and the malware was not detected.

Other methods of hacking into businesses or organizations, such as attaching malware to documents or files, often cannot deliver malicious software en masse without being detected. The new research, on the other hand, envisions a future where an organization may bring in an off-the-shelf machine learning model for any given task (say, a chat bot, or image detection) that could be loaded with malware while performing its task well enough not to arouse suspicion. According to the study, this is because AlexNet (like many machine learning models) is made up of millions of parameters and many complex layers of neurons including what are known as fully-connected "hidden" layers. By keeping the huge hidden layers in AlexNet completely intact, the researchers found that changing some other neurons had little effect on performance.

According to the paper, in this approach the malware is "disassembled" when embedded into the network's neurons, and assembled into functioning malware by a malicious receiver program that can also be used to download the poisoned model via an update. The malware can still be stopped if the target device verifies the model before launching it, according to the paper. It can also be detected using "traditional methods" like static and dynamic analysis. "Today it would not be simple to detect it by antivirus software, but this is only because nobody is looking in there," cybersecurity researcher and consultant Dr. Lukasz Olejnik told Motherboard. Olejnik also warned that the malware extraction step in the process could also risk detection. Once the malware hidden in the model was compiled into, well, malware, then it could be picked up. It also might just be overkill.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A federal judge forced a US Capitol rioter to unlock his laptop Wednesday after prosecutors argued that it likely contained footage of the January 6 insurrection from his helmet-worn camera. The judge granted the Justice Department's request to place Capitol riot defendant Guy Reffitt in front of his laptop so they could use facial recognition to unlock the device. The maneuver happened after the hearing ended and Reffitt's lawyer confirmed to CNN that the laptop was unlocked. Investigators seized the laptop and other devices earlier this year pursuant to a search warrant.

Reffitt has been in jail since his arrest in January. His case received national attention after his son spoke publicly about how Reffitt had threatened to kill family members if they turned him into the FBI. The case became an example of how former President Donald Trump's lies tore some families apart -- Reffitt's son and daughter testified against him in court or before the grand jury. He pleaded not guilty to five federal crimes, including bringing a handgun to the Capitol grounds during the insurrection and obstructing justice by allegedly threatening his family. The felony gun charge was added last month, and undercuts false claims from Trump and prominent Republican lawmakers that the rioters weren't armed and that they had "no guns whatsoever." The case raised intriguing constitutional questions about the right against self-incrimination, but Judge Dabney Friedrich agreed with prosecutors that the unlocking was within the law. "As the court here noted, requiring a defendant to expose his face to unlock a computer can be lawful, and is not far removed from other procedures that are now routinely approved by courts, with proper justification: standing in a lineup, submitting a handwriting or voice exemplar, or submitting a blood or DNA sample," CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said in an email.

Honig said judges try to strike a balance "between respecting a defendant's privacy and other rights on the one hand, and enabling prosecutors to obtain potentially crucial evidence with minimal intrusion on the defendant's rights, on the other." The "potentially crucial evidence" here may include footage of the handgun that Reffitt brought to the Capitol or comments he made about his intentions that day.

A London-based entrepreneur is putting a 1973 job application filled out by Steve Jobs up for auction. "The form Jobs apparently filled out for an unspecified position at an unspecified company will be available to buy either as a purportedly authenticated physical good or in digital form, as a nonfungible token, or NFT," reports CNET. From the report: The job application's gone up for auction several times before, selling in 2017 for $18,750, in 2018 for $174,757, and just this last March for a reported $222,400. The auction's organizer, Olly Joshi, is hoping to sweeten the pot by taking bids for the physical and a new NFT version side by side. Bidding starts July 21. "The Steve Jobs hand-written 1973 job application auction aims to highlight the modern shift in perceived value -- the physical or the digital," he said in a statement. The auction will run for seven days, during which people seeking the physical version can bid through Joshi's website, which is being run off an auctioneering app called Snoofa. People hoping to snag the digital version can go to popular NFT marketplace Rarible.

Activations of iOS and Android devices are now evenly split in the United States, with little sign of movement toward either platform dominating over the past two years, according to data sourced by Consumer Research Intelligence Partners (CIRP). MacRumors reports: CIRP estimates that iOS and Android each had 50 percent of new smartphone activations in the year ending this quarter. iOS's share of new smartphone activations climbed from 2017 to 2020, but has now remained at its peak level for a second consecutive year. CIRP Partner and Co-Founder Josh Lowitz said that the finding is significant because for several years, Android smartphones "had a significant edge, with over 60 percent of customers opting for an Android phone in most quarters. In the past couple of years, though, iOS has closed the gap, and now splits the market with Android."

Both Android and iOS users have had a high level of loyalty historically. Android loyalty has varied very slightly, in a narrow range of 90 to 93 percent in the past four years. iOS loyalty, on the other hand, has gradually increased over the past four years, from a low of 86 percent in early 2018 to 93 percent in the most recent quarter ending in June 2021. Loyalty and tendency to switch platforms may explain some of the change in the share of new smartphone activations, where iOS has gained loyalty in a market with a limited amount of switching.

"Starting September 1, 2021, the Chinese government will require that any Chinese citizen who finds a zero-day vulnerability must pass the details to the Chinese government," reports SecurityWeek, "and must not sell or give the knowledge to any third-party outside of China (apart from the vulnerable product's manufacturer)." Brief details are provided in a report by the Associated Press (AP) published Tuesday, July 13, 2021. No source is provided beyond the statement, "No one may 'collect, sell or publish information on network product security vulnerabilities,' say the rules issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China and the police and industry ministries...."

AP describes this action as "further tightening the Communist Party's control over information". This is unlikely to be the primary motivation for the new rule since the government already has a vice-like grip on data. Companies may not store data on Chinese customers outside of China. Foreign companies selling routers and some other network devices in China must disclose to regulators how any encryption features work.
"I would expect the Chinese Government to weaponize any discovered security vulnerabilities to enhance China's cybersecurity capabilities," Joseph Carson, chief security scientist and advisory CISO at ThycoticCentrify, tells SecurityWeek. And Jake Williams, co-founder and CTO at BreachQuest adds that "the defensive advantages of Chinese government organizations being able to mitigate vulnerabilities discovered may well outweigh any offensive gains...."

But he also believes this could rebound against China. "One of the biggest likely issues is brain drain. If Chinese researchers can profit handsomely from their work anywhere else, but can't do so in China, why would they stay? This probably helps China in the short term but harms them in the long term."

The new law does encourage network operators and product vendors to set up a reward mechanism for reported vulnerabilities, according to the Record. But Katie Moussouris, founder and CEO of Luta Security, also raises the issue of western-based bug bounty platforms that have been working with Chinese security researchers for the past years. "If Western-based bug bounty platforms comply with this requirement in order to continue to legally receive bug reports from Chinese researchers, we must assume they will be required to hand over vulnerability data to the Ministry within two days of receiving the reports," Moussouris said. "That requirement will effectively introduce a backdoor straight to the Chinese government in any VDP [vulnerability disclosure program] or bug bounty program where Chinese researchers submit bugs via platforms, even to non-Chinese companies."

Long-time Slashdot reader RoccamOccam shares "an interesting take on SQL and its issues from Jamie Brandon (who describes himself as an independent researcher who's built database engines, query planners, compilers, developer tools and interfaces).

It's title? "Against SQL." The relational model is great... But SQL is the only widely-used implementation of the relational model, and it is: Inexpressive, Incompressible, Non-porous. This isn't just a matter of some constant programmer overhead, like SQL queries taking 20% longer to write. The fact that these issues exist in our dominant model for accessing data has dramatic downstream effects for the entire industry:

- Complexity is a massive drag on quality and innovation in runtime and tooling
- The need for an application layer with hand-written coordination between database and client renders useless most of the best features of relational databases

The core message that I want people to take away is that there is potentially a huge amount of value to be unlocked by replacing SQL, and more generally in rethinking where and how we draw the lines between databases, query languages and programming languages...

I'd like to finish with this quote from Michael Stonebraker, one of the most prominent figures in the history of relational databases:

"My biggest complaint about System R is that the team never stopped to clean up SQL... All the annoying features of the language have endured to this day. SQL will be the COBOL of 2020..."
It's been interesting to follow the discussion on Twitter, where the post's author tweeted screenshots of actual SQL code to illustrate various shortcomings. But he also notes that "The SQL spec (part 2 = 1732) pages is more than twice the length of the Javascript 2021 spec (879 pages), almost matches the C++ 2020 spec (1853) pages and contains 411 occurrences of 'implementation-defined', occurrences which include type inference and error propagation."

His Twitter feed also includes a supportive retweet from Rust creator Graydon Hoare, and from a Tetrane developer who says "The Rust of SQL remains to be invented. I would like to see it come."

Slashdot reader Beeftopia writes: Rust has two modes: its default, safe mode, and an unsafe mode. In its default, safe mode, Rust prevents memory errors, such as "use-after-free" errors. It also prevents "data races" which is unsynchronized access to shared memory. In its unsafe mode (via use of the "unsafe" block), in which some of its APIs are written, it allows the use of potentially unsafe C-style features. The key challenge in verifying Rust's safety claims is accounting for the interaction between its safe and unsafe code. This article from April's issue of Communications of the ACM provides an overview of Rust and investigates its safety claims.
The article is co-authored by Ralf Jung, a prominent postdoctoral researcher in the 'Foundations of Programming' research group at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. And (spoiler alert) Jung has just received one of two 'Honorable Mentions' for the 'Dissertation Award' of the 'Association for Computing Machinery' (ACM), reports a nonprofit site operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science: In his dissertation, Ralf Jung now provides the first formal proof that the safety promises of Rust actually hold. "We were able to verify the safety of Rust's type system and thus show how Rust automatically and reliably prevents entire classes of programming errors," says Ralf Jung.

In doing so, he also successfully addressed a special aspect of the programming language: "The so-called 'type safety' goes hand in hand with the fact that Rust imposes restrictions on the programmer and does not allow everything that the programmer wants to do. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to write an operation into the code that Rust would not accept because of its type safety," the computer scientist continues. "This is where a special feature of Rust comes into play: programmers can mark their code as 'unsafe' if they want to achieve something that contradicts the programming language's safety precautions. Together with international collaborators, including my thesis advisor Derek Dreyer, we developed a theoretical framework that allows us to prove that Rust's safety claims hold despite the possibility of writing 'unsafe' code," Jung says.

This proof, called RustBelt, is complemented by Ralf Jung with a tool called Miri, with which 'unsafe' Rust code can be automatically tested for compliance with important rules of the Rust specification - a basic requirement for correctness and safety of this code. "While RustBelt was a great success, especially in academic circles, Miri is already established in industry as a tool for security testing of programs written in Rust," explains Ralf Jung.... The ACM states: "Through Jung's leadership and active engagement with the Rust Unsafe Code Guidelines working group, his work has already had profound impact on the design of Rust and laid essential foundations for its future."

Unite -- the UK's largest trade union, with some 1.4 million members -- has accused Amazon of inflating prices for items such as hand sanitiser and other health products during the pandemic. From a report: Working with competition lawyers Preiskel & Co LLP, Unite has submitted a formal complaint to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over alleged "abuse of its market position in relation to price gouging at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic." Unite claims that the price hikes hit vulnerable and older people, who had no choice but to stay at home and minimise their risk of infection. It has called on Amazon to "repay the overcharges." It claims to have uncovered 50 different items -- including soap, antibacterial spray, face masks, and toilet paper -- that were sold on Amazon "for at least double their usual price at the height of the pandemic last year."

The molecules produced by stomach bacteria could give the human body a helping hand when it comes to the immune system, even going so far as to help fight tumors. ScienceAlert reports: "The results are an example of how metabolites of intestinal bacteria can change the metabolism and gene regulation of our cells and thus positively influence the efficiency of tumor therapies," says immunologist Maik Luu from University Hospital Wurzburg in Germany. Short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) are one of the helpful molecules produced when dietary fiber is fermented in the gut. Major SCFAs are acetate and butyrate, along with the less common pentanoate, found only in some bacteria. All of these SCFAs have a bunch of positive health effects in humans, such as the regulation of insulin resistance, cholesterol, and even appetite. Luu and colleagues have now found that butyrate and pentanoate also boost the anti-tumor activity of a type of killer T cell known as CD8, by reprogramming the way they work. For the first time, they have experimentally demonstrated this in mice.

Using lab mice, the team found that certain commensal bacteria produce pentanoate. For example, one relatively rare human gut bacterium, Megasphaera massiliensis, enhanced small proteins called cytokines in the killer T cells, leading to an increased ability to destroy tumor cells. As a control, the team experimented with other, non-pentanoate producing bacteria and found no effect on the cytokine levels. This finding could be particularly useful for therapies that leverage the immune system to fight cancer. Some tumor cells have proteins on their surfaces that can bind to proteins on T cells, resulting in an immune 'checkpoint' response which tells the killer cell to spare its target -- in this case, the cancer cell. Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy works by blocking these checkpoint proteins, allowing the T cells to do their job and destroy the tumor cells. [...] The team also looked at a genetically modified type of T cell called CAR-T cells which are used in immunotherapy, and found that the bacterial assistance worked the same way, particularly on solid tumors. The research has been published in Nature Communications.

Amazon has won U.S. permission to use radar to monitor consumers' sleep habits. Bloomberg reports: The Federal Communications Commission on Friday granted Amazon approval to use a radar sensor to sense motion and "enable contactless sleep tracing functionalities." Amazon on June 22 asked the FCC, which regulates airwave uses, for permission to market a device that uses radar. The technology captures movement in three dimensions, enabling a user to control its features through simple gestures and movements, the company said in a filing. The capability, according to Amazon, could help people with "with mobility, speech, or tactile impairments," and it could monitor sleep with a high degree of precision.

"The use of Radar Sensors in sleep tracking could improve awareness and management of sleep hygiene, which in turn could produce significant health benefits for many Americans," Amazon said in its filing. "Radar Sensors will allow consumers to recognize potential sleep issues." Amazon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The company didn't fully describe the device in its filing, but did say it would not be a mobile device. The FCC earlier granted similar permission to Google for radar to enable touchless control of Pixel smartphones, the agency said in its letter approving Amazon's request.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares new from SciTechDaily: For the first time, University of Basel researchers have equipped an ultrathin semiconductor with superconducting contacts. These extremely thin materials with novel electronic and optical properties could pave the way for previously unimagined applications. Combined with superconductors, they are expected to give rise to new quantum phenomena and find use in quantum technology....

With a view to future applications in electronics and quantum technology, researchers are focusing on the development of new components that consist of a single layer (monolayer) of a semiconducting material. Some naturally occurring materials with semiconducting properties feature monolayers of this kind, stacked to form a three-dimensional crystal. In the laboratory, researchers can separate these layers — which are no thicker than a single molecule — and use them to build electronic components. These ultrathin semiconductors promise to deliver unique characteristics that are otherwise very difficult to control, such as the use of electric fields to influence the magnetic moments of the electrons. In addition, complex quantum mechanical phenomena take place in these semiconducting monolayers that may have applications in quantum technology...

A team of physicists, led by Dr. Andreas Baumgartner in the research group of Professor Christian Schönenberger at the Swiss Nanoscience Institute and the Department of Physics of the University of Basel, has now fitted a monolayer of the semiconductor molybdenum disulfide with superconducting contacts for the first time...

"In a superconductor, the electrons arrange themselves into pairs, like partners in a dance — with weird and wonderful consequences, such as the flow of the electrical current without a resistance," explains Baumgartner, the project manager of the study. "In the semiconductor molybdenum disulfide, on the other hand, the electrons perform a completely different dance, a strange solo routine that also incorporates their magnetic moments. Now we would like to find out which new and exotic dances the electrons agree upon if we combine these materials."
Mehdi Ramezani, lead author of the study, says that "In principle, the vertical contacts we've developed for the semiconductor layers can be applied to a large number of semiconductors."

"By 2030, technology will have advanced to the point that even the idea of owning objects might be obsolete," argues a thought-provoking new piece by Gizmodo's consumer tech reporter: Back in 2016, the World Economic Forum released a Facebook video with eight predictions it had for the world in 2030. "You'll own nothing. And you'll be happy," it says. "Whatever you want, you'll rent. And it'll be delivered by drone...."

In some ways, not owning things is easier. You have fewer commitments, less responsibility, and the freedom to bail whenever you want. There are upsides to owning less. There's also a big problem... The reality is when you buy a device that requires proprietary software to run, you don't own it. The money you hand over is an entry fee, nothing more. When everything is a lease, you also agree to a life defined by someone else's terms... When hardware is merely a vessel for software and not a useful thing on its own, you don't really get to decide anything. A company will decide when to stop pushing vital updates. It might also decide what you do with the product after it's "dead...." The power has shifted so that companies set the parameters, and consumers have to make do with picking the lesser of several evils...

You can trace much of this back to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which basically makes it illegal to circumvent "digital locks" that protect a company's proprietary software... One day in the future, if you buy a physical house, you will likely have to rent the software that operates it. You won't really have a say in the updates that get pushed out, or the features that get taken away. You'll have less of a say in when you renovate or upgrade, even if you want to continue using the house as is. You might not even have the right to do DIY repairs yourself. Just because you've bought a smart washing machine, doesn't mean you'll be allowed to repair it yourself if it breaks — or if you'll be allowed to pick which repair shop can fix it for you. You only have to look as far as John Deere, Apple, and General Motors. Each one of these companies has argued that people who bought their products weren't allowed to repair them unless they were from a pre-approved shop.

The scary thing is that only sounds terrible if you have the mental energy to care about principles.

Making decisions all the time is difficult, and it's easier when someone else limits the options you can choose from. It's not hard to turn a blind eye to a problem if, for the most part, your life is made a little simpler. Isn't that what every tech company says it's trying to do? Make your life a little simpler? Life is hard enough already, and living in a home that maintains itself so long as you hand over control — well, by 2030, who's to say that's not what we'll all want?

If you use an iPhone or Android phone, chances are the majority of your most-used apps were made by Apple and Google. From a report: That's the takeaway from a new Comscore study that ranks the popularity of preinstalled iOS and Android apps, such as Apple's Messages, alongside apps made by other developers. The results show that the majority of apps people use on their phones in the US come preinstalled by either Apple or Google. The first-of-its-kind report was commissioned by Facebook, one of Apple's loudest critics, and shared exclusively with The Verge. Preinstalled services dominate when it comes to basics like weather, photos, and clocks, according to the report, suggesting these categories will be difficult for other apps to compete in. Defaults don't win out exclusively, though: Apple Maps and Music don't appear on the iOS list at all, and Gmail makes the iOS list several entries below Apple Mail.

The timing, as Facebook likely intentioned, is apt: Apple and Google are increasingly under scrutiny for how they favor their own services over competitors like Spotify. US lawmakers are currently reviewing a new set of bills designed to curb the power of Big Tech, including legislation that could potentially bar Apple and Google from giving their services the upper hand against rivals. The pushback stems from how Apple and Google bundle their apps and services with their mobile operating systems in ways that some of their competitors think is unfair. The criticism is harsher against Apple, given that it more tightly controls the apps that come preinstalled on the iPhone and doesn't allow developers to circumvent its App Store.

Endurance22 will launch early next year with aim of locating and surveying wreck in the Weddell Sea. From a report: The location of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance has been one of the great maritime mysteries since the ship became trapped in ice and sank in 1915. Finding this symbol of the "heroic age" of polar exploration at the bottom of the Weddell Sea was long thought impossible because of the harshness of the Antarctic environment -- "the evil conditions," as Shackleton described them. Now a major scientific expedition, announced on Monday, is being planned with a mission to locate, survey and film the wreck. Endurance22 will launch early next year, in a vessel that will brave the most treacherous frozen waters, pounding its way through miles of pack ice. The effects of climate change will make the expedition a little less difficult, with melting ice easing the vessel's passage. An international team of scientists with expertise in the study of ice and climate will be onboard, advancing knowledge of the Antarctic environment.

Mensun Bound, its director of exploration, headed the 2019 search for the Endurance that had to be called off because of extreme weather conditions, after an underwater vehicle became trapped beneath the ice. He told the Guardian: "There's a complexity of emotions all swishing around within me. On the one hand, there's great excitement. On the other, for the last three years, I've had to carry this persistent sadness in me that we didn't find it last time. It's never far from my thoughts. That ship is always teasing my imagination." Bound said global warming in the Antarctic is "absolutely devastating," but that the melting ice "has improved our chances" of discovering the shipwreck.

Britain's proposed new internet law entails a government power grab with worrying implications for freedom of speech, according to civil liberties groups, academics and the tech industry. From a report: The groups are concerned the proposed Online Safety Bill would hand to Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden disproportionate powers in the name of protecting users from "harmful" content. The Bill allow him to "modify" a code of practice -- the blueprint created by the regulator Ofcom for how tech companies should protect users -- to ensure it "reflects government policy." Critics say such powers, which were set out in a draft of the proposed law published in May and due for imminent scrutiny by MPs and peers, could undermine the regulator's independence and potentially politicize the regulation of the internet.

"The notion that a political appointee will have the unilateral power to alter the legal boundaries of free speech based on the political whims of the moment frankly makes the blood run cold," said Heather Burns, policy manager at the Open Rights Group. The draft bill -- which hasn't yet begun its formal passage through parliament -- is due to be checked line-by-line by legislators before being brought back to parliament later this year, where it will then pass through the stages it needs to end up on the statute books. The U.K. government and opposition parties are currently finalizing which lawmakers will sit on the pre-legislative committee.

Microsoft has released a visually "refreshed" version of its Office desktop apps for both Windows 10 and 11. Microsoft officials said this new Office refresh will "shine" on Windows 11 but still work on Windows 10. Microsoft also is releasing its first publicly available test build of 64-bit Office for Windows on Arm today. From a report: The updated Office uses Fluent design across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Project, Publisher, and Visio. The updated apps are meant to look similar to the Windows 11 OS, design-wise. Via the updated Office interface, Office is set to match users' Windows themes, including black (Dark Mode), white, colorful, or dark gray. The Quick Access toolbar is hidden by default in the name of simplifying the interface. The refreshed Office is available to Office Insider testers running Beta Channel builds. Those who don't want it can turn off the "Coming Soon" feature at the top right hand corner of the menu. Testers can toggle between the new and existing interface to move between the current and newly updated Office apps.

"When U.S. law enforcement officials need to cast a wide net for information, they're increasingly turning to the vast digital ponds of personal data created by Big Tech companies via the devices and online services that have hooked billions of people around the world," reports the Associated Press: Data compiled by four of the biggest tech companies shows that law enforcement requests for user information — phone calls, emails, texts, photos, shopping histories, driving routes and more — have more than tripled in the U.S. since 2015. Police are also increasingly savvy about covering their tracks so as not to alert suspects of their interest... In just the first half of 2020 — the most recent data available — Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft together fielded more than 112,000 data requests from local, state and federal officials. The companies agreed to hand over some data in 85% of those cases. Facebook, including its Instagram service, accounted for the largest number of disclosures.

Consider Newport, a coastal city of 24,000 residents that attracts a flood of summer tourists. Fewer than 100 officers patrol the city — but they make multiple requests a week for online data from tech companies. That's because most crimes — from larceny and financial scams to a recent fatal house party stabbing at a vacation rental booked online — can be at least partly traced on the internet. Tech providers, especially social media platforms, offer a "treasure trove of information" that can help solve them, said Lt. Robert Salter, a supervising police detective in Newport.

"Everything happens on Facebook," Salter said. "The amount of information you can get from people's conversations online — it's insane."

As ordinary people have become increasingly dependent on Big Tech services to help manage their lives, American law enforcement officials have grown far more savvy about technology than they were five or six years ago, said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group. That's created what Cohn calls "the golden age of government surveillance." Not only has it become far easier for police to trace the online trails left by suspects, they can also frequently hide their requests by obtaining gag orders from judges and magistrates. Those orders block Big Tech companies from notifying the target of a subpoena or warrant of law enforcement's interest in their information — contrary to the companies' stated policies...

Nearly all big tech companies — from Amazon to rental sites like Airbnb, ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft and service providers like Verizon — now have teams to respond...
Cohn says American law is still premised on the outdated idea that valuable data is stored at home — and can thus be protected by precluding home searches without a warrant. At the very least, Cohn suggests more tech companies should be using encryption technology to protect data access without the user's key.

But Newport supervising police detective Lt. Robert Salter supplied his own answer for people worried about how police officers are requesting more and more data. "Don't commit crimes and don't use your computer and phones to do it."