jd writes: NIST has announced winners of its post-quantum cryptography battle of the giants.

CRYSTALS-Kyber has been chosen for standard encryption, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, Falcon, and SPHINCS+ were chosen for digital signatures. Falcon is recommended by NIST as a backup for Dilithium where shorter keys are needed, and SPHINCS+ uses a different mathematical technique than all of the other submissions, so if it is found that there's a flaw in the maths for the others, then there's something to fall back on.

There is still a final round for public key encryption algorithms. The remaining candidates are BIKE, Classic McEliece, HQC, and SIKE.

The mailing list members probably wish that they could use Slashdot's moderation system about now, as some of the discussions have been extremely heated. This was especially true for the signature system Rainbow, which is used by the ABC Mint crypto-currency, which was rejected after what was claimed to be a catastrophic flaw was reported, with allegations that it could be broken over a weekend on a laptop, followed by counter-allegations that many of the other algorithms had significant flaws in them also. (This is likely why SPHINCS+ is a backup.)

Another area that was hotly debated was CPU design flaws, particularly HertzBleed, which got the well-known crypto maestro Bernstein rather annoyed. As SIKE is a final round candidate, NIST seem to be satisfied with his explanation for why CPU design flaws should not be considered. It is to be seen how this debate progresses.

This week New York's attorney general announced they're officially "launching investigations into the social media companies that the Buffalo shooter used to plan, promote, and stream his terror attack." Slashdot reader echo123 points out that Discord confirmed that roughly 30 minutes before the attack a "small group" was invited to join the shooter's server. "None of the people he invited to review his writings appeared to have alerted law enforcement," reports the New York Times., "and the massacre played out much as envisioned."

But meanwhile, another Times article tells a tangentially-related story from 2019 about what ultimately happened to "a partial recording of a livestream by a gunman while he murdered 51 people that day at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand." For more than three years, the video has remained undisturbed on Facebook, cropped to a square and slowed down in parts. About three-quarters of the way through the video, text pops up urging the audience to "Share THIS...." Online writings apparently connected to the 18-year-old man accused of killing 10 people at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store Saturday said that he drew inspiration for a livestreamed attack from the Christchurch shooting. The clip on Facebook — one of dozens that are online, even after years of work to remove them — may have been part of the reason that the Christchurch gunman's tactics were so easy to emulate.

In a search spanning 24 hours this week, The New York Times identified more than 50 clips and online links with the Christchurch gunman's 2019 footage. They were on at least nine platforms and websites, including Reddit, Twitter, Telegram, 4chan and the video site Rumble, according to the Times' review. Three of the videos had been uploaded to Facebook as far back as the day of the killings, according to the Tech Transparency Project, an industry watchdog group, while others were posted as recently as this week. The clips and links were not difficult to find, even though Facebook, Twitter and other platforms pledged in 2019 to eradicate the footage, pushed partly by public outrage over the incident and by world governments. In the aftermath, tech companies and governments banded together, forming coalitions to crack down on terrorist and violent extremist content online. Yet even as Facebook expunged 4.5 million pieces of content related to the Christchurch attack within six months of the killings, what the Times found this week shows that a mass killer's video has an enduring — and potentially everlasting — afterlife on the internet.

"It is clear some progress has been made since Christchurch, but we also live in a kind of world where these videos will never be scrubbed completely from the internet," said Brian Fishman, a former director of counterterrorism at Facebook who helped lead the effort to identify and remove the Christchurch videos from the site in 2019....

Facebook, which is owned by Meta, said that for every 10,000 views of content on the platform, only an estimated five were of terrorism-related material. Rumble and Reddit said the Christchurch videos violated their rules and they were continuing to remove them. Twitter, 4chan and Telegram did not respond to requests for comment
For what it's worth, this week CNN also republished an email they'd received in 2016 from 4chan's current owner, Hiroyuki Nishimura. The gist of the email? "If I liked censorship, I would have already done that."

But Slashdot reader Bruce66423 also shares an interesting observation from The Guardian's senior tech reporter about the major tech platforms. "According to Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, there is a tech solution to this uniquely tech problem. Tech companies just aren't financially motivated to invest resources into developing it." Farid's work includes research into robust hashing, a tool that creates a fingerprint for videos that allows platforms to find them and their copies as soon as they are uploaded...

Farid: It's not as hard a problem as the technology sector will have you believe... The core technology to stop redistribution is called "hashing" or "robust hashing" or "perceptual hashing". The basic idea is quite simple: you have a piece of content that is not allowed on your service either because it violated terms of service, it's illegal or for whatever reason, you reach into that content, and extract a digital signature, or a hash as it's called.... That's actually pretty easy to do. We've been able to do this for a long time. The second part is that the signature should be stable even if the content is being modified, when somebody changes say the size or the color or adds text. The last thing is you should be able to extract and compare signatures very quickly.

So if we had a technology that satisfied all of those criteria, Twitch would say, we've identified a terror attack that's being live-streamed. We're going to grab that video. We're going to extract the hash and we are going to share it with the industry. And then every time a video is uploaded with the hash, the signature is compared against this database, which is being updated almost instantaneously. And then you stop the redistribution.

It's a problem of collaboration across the industry and it's a problem of the underlying technology. And if this was the first time it happened, I'd understand. But this is not, this is not the 10th time. It's not the 20th time. I want to emphasize: no technology's going to be perfect. It's battling an inherently adversarial system. But this is not a few things slipping through the cracks.... This is a complete catastrophic failure to contain this material. And in my opinion, as it was with New Zealand and as it was the one before then, it is inexcusable from a technological standpoint.
"These are now trillion-dollar companies we are talking about collectively," Farid points out later. "How is it that their hashing technology is so bad?

According to a survey of 501 people conducted by insurance company Progressive, most people prefer the process of buying a car online than at dealerships. Autoblog reports: Based on the 251 people who completed a transaction entirely online or through a dealer web site, and the 250 who did solely face-to-face business, there are two big takeaways. The first is that online shopping, still a small percentage of overall car sales, is growing rapidly in acceptance and actual transactions. [...] The second takeaway is that millennials are a major part of the online sales growth.

Overall, though, online shoppers expressed more joy with the process than showroom floor shoppers. Compared to 78% of buyers highly satisfied with buying a car online, only 58% of in-person shoppers registered the same pleasure. That carried through to trade-ins and financing as well. Eighty percent of online shoppers were highly satisfied with the trade-in process, versus 57% of dealership visitors; 70% of online shoppers gave the highest marks to the financing process as opposed to 53% of guests asked to "Step into the office" and wait while the salesperson conferred with the finance manager.

"Enabling developer productivity has become a key vector in every organization's success," writes Matt Asay at InfoWorld — not a nice-to-have feature but a must-have.

"Which is why, perhaps ironically, the best way to set your developers free may actually be to fetter their freedom." The more developers mattered, the more everyone wanted to cater to their needs with new software tools, new open source projects, new cloud services, etc. This meant lots of new developer choice and associated freedom, but that wasn't necessarily an unalloyed good. As RedMonk analyst Steven O'Grady noted in 2017, "The good news is that this developer-driven fragmentation has yielded an incredible array of open source software. The bad news is that, even for developers, managing this fragmentation is challenging."

Can one have too much choice? Yep.

It's long been known in consumer retail, for example, that when there is too much choice, "consumers are less likely to buy anything at all, and if they do buy, they are less satisfied with their selection." Turns out this isn't just a matter of breakfast cereals or clothing. It also applies to developers building enterprise software. InfoWorld's Scott Carey writes that "complexity is killing software developers." He's right. But what can be done?

In a conversation with Weaveworks CEO Alexis Richardson, he related how self-service development platforms are reemerging to help developers make sense of all that open source and cloud choice. By giving developers "a standard, pre-approved environment in which the effort to create an app from an idea is minimal," he explained, it allows them to "focus on innovation not plumbing."
"Done right, a little bit of constraint goes a long way..." Asay argues, touting the benefits of PaaS (platform as a service) self-service development platforms. ("Enterprises that want to give their developers the freedom the cloud affords can couple it with just enough constraint to make that freedom useful....")

Asay argues that "However you approach it, the point is to stop thinking about freedom and control as impossibly opposed. Smart enterprises are figuring out ways to enable their developers using self-service platforms. Maybe you should, too."

Google announced on Wednesday that it would test letting Android developers use their own billing systems in their apps, the first step in what could lead to a dramatic reshaping of the app economy. However, Epic Games, which has been a strong proponent for opening app marketplaces and sued Google after the search giant removed Fortnite from Google Play for including direct payments, still isn't happy. From a report: It plans to continue advocating for an app ecosystem that offers more choices, according to a statement the company shared with The Verge. "Apple and Google continue to abuse their market power with policies that stifle innovation, inflate prices and reduce consumer choice," Corie Wright, Epic's VP of public policy, said in the statement. "One deal does not change the anticompetitive status quo. We will continue to fight for fair and open platforms for all developers and consumers and work with policymakers and regulators to hold these gatekeepers accountable for their anticompetitive conduct."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Instagram will let users switch their feeds so they view the most recent posts first, relenting after years of complaints about the photo app's current ranking that chooses the order of posts based on a user's behavior. Meta's Instagram is introducing two options for its feed, "Following" and "Favorites," according to a blog post Wednesday. Following works the way Instagram did up until 2016: it shows posts in reverse-chronological order. Favorites allows further curation, letting users list up to 50 accounts they wish to see higher in their feeds. "We want people to feel good about the time they spend on Instagram, by giving them ways to shape their experience into what's best for them," the company said in a statement Wednesday.

Instagram introduced an algorithmic ordering for its feed because professional users, such as influencers and brands, had started posting so frequently and strategically that they would drown out content from regular users, people familiar with the matter have said. Regular users started to think their friends weren't using Instagram. The 2016 algorithm was trained so that it showed people whatever content would inspire them to post more, the people said. While the change did help increase visibility for content from users' friends and family, it drew backlash from professionals, whose follower growth started slowing, as well as regular users, who didn't like the decrease in control. Instagram says people are more satisfied with the current algorithm's ordering, "so we are not defaulting people into a chronological feed experience,â Instagram said in its statement. "To use Favorites and Following, tap on Instagram in the top left corner of your home page to choose what you see."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: SpaceX can keep launching broadband satellites despite a lawsuit filed by Viasat, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. Viasat sued the Federal Communications Commission in May and asked judges for a stay that would halt SpaceX's ongoing launches of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that power Starlink Internet service. To get a stay, Viasat had to show that it is likely to win its lawsuit alleging that the FCC improperly approved the satellite launches. A three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was not persuaded, saying in a short order that "Viasat has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review." The judges did grant a motion to expedite the appeal, however, so the case should move faster than normal.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) yesterday filed a complaint against Amazon over the sale of hundreds of thousands of hazardous products, including carbon monoxide detectors that fail to detect carbon monoxide, hair dryers without required protection from shock and electrocution, and flammable sleepwear meant for children. The CPSC said it sued Amazon to "force [the] recall" of the dangerous products. While Amazon has halted sales of most of them already and issued refunds, the CPSC said it isn't satisfied with how Amazon notified customers and said the industry giant must do more to ensure that the faulty products are destroyed. The dangerous products were offered by third parties using the "Fulfilled by Amazon" (FBA) program, in which Amazon stores products in its warehouses, ships them to customers, and takes a sizable cut from the proceeds. The CPSC's administrative complaint alleges that Amazon hasn't taken enough responsibility for dangerous third-party products that it ships via FBA.

The complaint didn't mention any specific incidents of injury but said the evidence supporting the charges includes "lawsuits concerning incidents or injuries involving various consumer products identified in the Complaint." It also said that CPSC staff tested the products and found that they don't meet safety requirements. Products that don't meet these requirements pose a substantial risk of injury or death to consumers, the agency said. The CPSC said its complaint "seeks to force Amazon, as a distributor of the products, to stop selling these products, work with CPSC staff on a recall of the products, and to directly notify consumers who purchased them about the recall and offer them a full refund." In a statement provided to Ars, Amazon said it has already removed the "vast majority" of the products from its online store, notified customers, and provided refunds. Amazon alleged that the CPSC hasn't provided enough information about the remaining products. Amazon's full statement reads: "Customer safety is a top priority and we take prompt action to protect customers when we are aware of a safety concern. As the CPSC's own complaint acknowledges, for the vast majority of the products in question, Amazon already immediately removed the products from our store, notified customers about potential safety concerns, advised customers to destroy the products, and provided customers with full refunds. For the remaining few products in question, the CPSC did not provide Amazon with enough information for us to take action and despite our requests, CPSC has remained unresponsive. Amazon has an industry-leading recalls program and we have further offered to expand our capabilities to handle recalls for all products sold in our store, regardless of whether those products were sold or fulfilled by Amazon or third-party sellers. We are unclear as to why the CPSC has rejected that offer or why they have filed a complaint seeking to force us to take actions almost entirely duplicative of those we've already taken."

Charlotte Web shares a report from SFGate: Despite the popular belief that residents are fleeing California, there is not in fact a statewide exodus, new research out of the University of California finds. For one, while residents are moving out of state, they are not doing so at "unusual rates." Similarly, the research found no evidence of "millionaire flight" from California and notes that the state continues to attract as much venture capital as all other U.S. states combined, despite the recent exodus of Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. The report did reveal net migration out of San Francisco during the pandemic. However, about two-thirds of people who left the city remained in the Bay Area, while 80% stayed in California, which is consistent with earlier trends...

A recent survey by UC San Diego, included in the project, found that the percentage of Californians who plan to leave the state has remained static for two years. In fact, only 23% of California voters said they were seriously considering leaving the state, which is lower than the 24% who said the same in a 2019 survey conducted by UC Berkeley. [...] The myth of "millionaire flight" from California, the project also found, is just that -- a myth. Affluent Californians were actually more satisfied with the direction the state is going and very likely to believe it will be better when their children grow up. Likewise, an analysis of almost two decades of Franchise Tax Board data by Stanford University and Cornell University found that there has been no millionaire flight from California, despite recent tax increases levied on higher earners. "From housing affordability to post-pandemic recovery, California is faced with solving a daunting number of existential challenges. To help inform those important public discussions, UC assembled many of the state's top researchers to provide a data-driven understanding of California's population trends," said UC Regent John A. Perez in a press release.

"Sliced and diced by geography, race, income and other demographic factors, our efforts have produced a clearer picture of who perceives California as the Golden State versus a failed state," he continued. "The empirical data will be, at once, disappointing to those who want to write California's obituary, as well as a call to action for policymakers to address the challenges that have caused some to lose faith in the California Dream."

Over the Fourth of July weekend, a number of news outlets, including Slashdot, ran stories warning that the free and open-source audio editor Audacity may now be classified as spyware due to recent updates to its privacy policy. Ars Technica's Jim Salter looked into these claims and found that that is not the case. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from his report: FOSS-focused personal technology site SlashGear declares that although Audacity is free and open source, new owner Muse Group can "do some pretty damaging changes" -- specifically meaning its new privacy policy and telemetry features, described as "overarching and vague." FOSSPost goes even further, running the headline "Audacity is now a possible spyware, remove it ASAP." The root of both sites' concern is the privacy policy instigated by new Audacity owner Muse Group, who already published open source music notation tool MuseScore. The privacy policy, which was last updated on July 2, outlines the data which the app may collect [...]. The personal data being collected as outlined in the first five bullet points is not particularly broad -- in fact, it's quite similar to the collected data described in FOSSPost's own privacy policy: IP address, browser user-agent, "some other cookies your browser may provide us with," and (by way of WordPress and Google analytics) "your geographical location, cookies for other websites you visited or any other information your browser can give about you." This leaves the last row -- data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities' requests (if any)." While that's certainly a broad category and not particularly well-defined, it's also a fact of life in 2021. Whether a privacy policy says so or not, the odds are rather good that any given company will comply with legitimate law enforcement requests. If it doesn't, it won't likely be a company for long. The final grain of salt in the wound is a line stating that Audacity is "not intended for individuals below the age of 13" and requesting people under 13 years old "please do not use the App." This is an effort to avoid the added complexity and expense of dealing with laws regulating collection of personal data from children.

The first thing to point out is that neither the privacy policy nor the in-app telemetry in question are actually in effect yet -- both are targeted to an upcoming 3.0.3 release, while the most recent available version is 3.0.2. For now, that means there's absolutely no need for anyone to panic about their currently-installed version of Audacity. [...] Although FOSS-focused media outlets including FOSSPost and Slashgear reported negatively on this issue over the holiday weekend, the contributors and commenters active on the project's Github seem to have been largely satisfied by the May 13 update, which declared that Muse Group would self-host its telemetry sessions rather than using third-party libraries and hosting. The same day the second pull request went live, Github user Megaf said, "Good stuff. As long as the data is not going to [third party tech giants] we should be happy. Collect the data you really need, self-host it, make it private, make it opt-in, and we shall help." It's a small sample, but the sentiment seems broadly supported, with 66 positive and 12 negative reactions. Reaction to Megaf's comment reflects user reaction to the updated pull request itself, which currently has 606 positive and 29 explicitly negative reactions -- a marked improvement over the original pull request's 4,039 explicitly negative reactions and only 300 positive reactions. We believe that the user community got it right -- Muse Group appears to be taking the community's privacy concerns very seriously indeed, and its actual policies as stated appear to be reasonable.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced an artificial intelligence system that can recommend code for software developers to use as they write code. From a report: Microsoft is looking to simplify the process of programming, the area where the company got its start in 1975. That could keep programmers who already use the company's tools satisfied and also attract new ones. The system, called GitHub Copilot, draws on source code uploaded to code-sharing service GitHub, which Microsoft acquired in 2018, as well as other websites. Microsoft and GitHub developed it with help from OpenAI, an AI research start-up that Microsoft backed in 2019.

Researchers at Microsoft and other institutions have been trying to teach computers to write code for decades. The concept has yet to go mainstream, at times because programs to write programs have not been versatile enough. The GitHub Copilot effort is a notable attempt in the field, relying as it does on a large volume of code in many programming languages and vast Azure cloud computing power. Nat Friedman, CEO of GitHub, describes GitHub Copilot as a virtual version of what software creators call a pair programmer -- that's when two developers work side by side collaboratively on the same project. The tool looks at existing code and comments in the current file and the location of the cursor, and it offers up one or more lines to add. As programmers accept or reject suggestions, the model learns and becomes more sophisticated over time. The new software makes coding faster, Friedman said in an interview last week. Hundreds of developers at GitHub have been using the Copilot feature all day while coding, and the majority of them are accepting suggestions and not turning the feature off, Friedman said.

An anonymous reader shares a report from The Conversation: As people around the world escape poverty, you might expect their energy use to increase. But my research in Nepal, Vietnam, and Zambia found the opposite: lower levels of deprivation were linked to lower levels of energy demand. What is behind this counterintuitive finding? [...] We found that households that do have access to clean fuels, safe water, basic education and adequate food -- that is, those not in extreme poverty -- can use as little as half the energy of the national average in their country. This is important, as it goes directly against the argument that more resources and energy will be needed for people in the global south to escape extreme poverty. The biggest factor is the switch from traditional cooking fuels, like firewood or charcoal, to more efficient (and less polluting) electricity and gas.

In Zambia, Nepal, and Vietnam, modern energy resources are extremely unfairly distributed -- more so than income, general spending, or even spending on leisure. As a consequence, poorer households use more dirty energy than richer households, with ensuing health and gender impacts. Cooking with inefficient fuels consumes a lot of energy, and even more when water needs to be boiled before drinking. But do households with higher incomes and more devices have a better chance of escaping poverty? Some do, but having higher incomes and mobile phones are not either prerequisites or guarantees of having basic needs satisfied. Richer households without access to electricity or sanitation are not spared from having malnourished children or health problems from using charcoal. Ironically, for most households, it is easier to obtain a mobile phone than a clean, nonpolluting fuel for cooking. Therefore, measuring progress via household income leads to an incomplete understanding of poverty and its deprivations.

So what? Are we arguing against the global south using more energy for development? No: instead of focusing on how much energy is used, we are pointing to the importance of collective services (like electricity, indoor sanitation and public transport) for alleviating the multiple deprivations of poverty. In addressing these issues we cannot shy away from asking why so many countries in the global south have such a low capacity to invest in those services. It has to do with the fact that poverty does not just happen: it is created via interlinked systems of wealth extraction such as structural adjustment, or high costs of servicing national debts. Given that climate change is caused by the energy use of a rich minority in the global north but the consequences are borne by the majority in the poorer global south, human development is not only a matter of economic justice but also climate justice. Investing in vital collective services underpins both.

AT&T is lobbying against proposals to subsidize fiber-to-the-home deployment across the U.S., arguing that rural people don't need fiber and should be satisfied with Internet service that provides only 10Mbps upload speeds. Ars Technica reports: AT&T Executive VP Joan Marsh detailed the company's stance Friday in a blog post titled "Defining Broadband For the 21st Century." AT&T's preferred definition of 21st-century broadband could be met with wireless technology or AT&T's VDSL, a 14-year-old system that brings fiber to neighborhoods but uses copper telephone wires for the final connections into each home.

"[T]here would be significant additional cost to deploy fiber to virtually every home and small business in the country, when at present there is no compelling evidence that those expenditures are justified over the service quality of a 50/10 or 100/20Mbps product," AT&T wrote. (That would be 50Mbps download speeds with 10Mbps upload speeds or 100Mbps downloads with 20Mbps uploads.) AT&T said that "overbuilding" areas that already have acceptable speeds "would needlessly devalue private investment and waste broadband-directed dollars." "Overbuilding" is what the broadband industry calls one ISP building in an area already served by another ISP, whereas Internet users desperate for cheaper, faster, and more reliable service call that "broadband competition."

Brazil's consumer protection agency Procon-SP has fined Apple nearly $1.92 million for selling iPhone without a charger, reports Engadget (citing two technology blogs.) Apple's move was a violation of the country's Consumer Defense Code, according to the watchdog.

Procon-SP told Apple about the alleged violation in December. Apple responded by reiterating its environmental angle, arguing that it would reduce CO2 emissions and rare earth mining. It noted that many customers already had spare chargers. The agency clearly wasn't satisfied with that answer, however. In issuing the fine, Procon-SP executive director Fernando Capez told Apple it needed to respect Brazilian law.

The fine also covers allegedly misleading water resistance claims. Apple supposedly declined to repair iPhones that had suffered water damage under warranty despite touting the devices' ability to survive immersion for extended periods.

Tokolosh writes: On February 13, 2018 the FreeBSD Foundation posted its Code of Conduct. This included a system for reporting offenders, plus a Code of Conduct Committee to review charges and issue sanctions. The resulting story on Slashdot on February 17 triggered 859 comments. Needless to say, it was controversial.

In 2020, a survey indicated that some 35% of the FreeBSD developer community was dissatisfied with their 2018 Code of Conduct, 34% were neutral, and only 30% satisfied. So they set out to adopt a new CoC. A second survey asked which code of conduct should FreeBSD adopt? 4% favored keeping the 2018 code of conduct, 33% favored the Go-derived code of conduct, 63% favored the LLVM-derived code of conduct. The LLVM Project code was thus adopted.

My pragmatic question back in 2018 was, will this CoC lead to a better FreeBSD, more engagement, a larger, more productive community, and more market share for FreeBSD? In other words, does the CoC give FreeBSD an evolutionary advantage? If a different or no CoC had been imposed, would the FreeBSD of today be different? If so, in what way? The answer is not clear, so I am submitting this story to gather input.

The Verge reports that SpaceX's first high-altitude test flight of its Starship rocket, "which launched successfully but exploded in a botched landing attempt in December, violated the terms of its Federal Aviation Administration test license, according to two people familiar with the incident." Both the landing explosion and license violation prompted a formal investigation by the FAA, driving regulators to put extra scrutiny on Elon Musk's hasty Mars rocket test campaign. The so-called mishap investigation was opened that week, focusing not only on the explosive landing but on SpaceX's refusal to stick to the terms of what the FAA authorized, the two people said. It was unclear what part of the test flight violated the FAA license, and an FAA spokesman declined to specify in a statement to The Verge.

"The FAA will continue to work with SpaceX to evaluate additional information provided by the company as part of its application to modify its launch license," FAA spokesman Steve Kulm said Friday. "While we recognize the importance of moving quickly to foster growth and innovation in commercial space, the FAA will not compromise its responsibility to protect public safety. We will approve the modification only after we are satisfied that SpaceX has taken the necessary steps to comply with regulatory requirements."

The heightened scrutiny from regulators after the launchpad spectacle has played a role in holding up SpaceX's latest "SN9" Starship test attempt, which the company said would happen on Thursday. The shiny steel alloy, 16-story-tall rocket was loaded with fuel and ready to fly. But at the time, FAA officials were still going through their license review process for the test because of several changes SpaceX made in its license application, a source said. Musk, frustrated with the process, took to Twitter.
"Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure," Musk tweeted on Thursday. "Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars."

The Verge also notes that Musk was asked by the Wall Street Journal what role government should play in regulating innovation just a few hours before Starship's test in December. Musk's reply? "A lot of the time, the best thing the government can do is just get out of the way."

IBM has agreed to pay $24.25 million to resolve a pair of investigations by the Federal Communications Commission(FCC) over subsidies awarded to connect schools and libraries to broadband. From a report: IBM's payment will resolve two FCC investigations that have spanned nearly 15 years over its alleged violations of "E-Rate" program rules in connection with New York City and El Paso school districts. Under the agreement, IBM agreed to return $24.25 million to the Universal Service Fund that funds the E-Rate program, but did not admit wrongdoing. The FCC said its investigations found IBM had not satisfied the competitive bidding rules in New York for 2005-2008 and provided ineligible equipment and services in El Paso for 2001. IBM said in a statement it believed it "acted appropriately in its support of the E-rate program, but in the interest of amicably resolving a longstanding matter we are pleased to have reached this settlement." IBM added it had provided internet connectivity to thousands of U.S. schools and libraries and millions of American students through the E-rate program.

Google's $2.1 billion deal for Fitbit might go down as the only merger to qualify as both pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. From a report: European Union antitrust regulators have again extended their decision deadline, this time to Jan. 8, 2021. And it could be further complicated by U.S. authorities, who are drawing up a broader antitrust case against Google and/or its parent company Alphabet. The deal was originally announced on Nov. 1, 2019. The delay is about data: Google has always said the acquisition is centered on devices, but that alone hasn't allayed regulator fears over what happens to the information those devices collect. Reuters reports that Google recently offered concessions to the European Commission: It would "restrict the use of Fitbit data for Google ads, facilitate rival makers of wearables seeking to connect to the Android platform and allow third parties' continued access to Fitbit users' data with their consent." These revisions appear to have satisfied the EC, but that could change once analyzed by outside critics. Plus, again, there are those pesky Americans.

schwit1 shares a report from Bloomberg: Europe's top aviation regulator said he's satisfied that changes to Boeing Co.'s 737 Max have made the plane safe enough to return to the region's skies before 2020 is out, even as a further upgrade his agency demanded won't be ready for up to two years. After test flights conducted in September, EASA is performing final document reviews ahead of a draft airworthiness directive it expects to issue next month, said Patrick Ky, executive director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. That will be followed by four weeks of public comment, while the development of a so-called synthetic sensor to add redundancy will take 20 to 24 months, he said. The software-based solution will be required on the larger 737 Max 10 variant before its debut targeted for 2022, and retrofitted onto other versions.

"President Donald Trump said Saturday he's given his 'blessing' to a proposed deal that would see the popular video-sharing app TikTok partner with Oracle and Walmart and form a U.S. company," reports CBS News: Mr. Trump has targeted Chinese-owned TikTok for national security and data privacy concerns in the latest flashpoint in the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing. The president's support for a deal comes just a day after the Commerce Department announced restrictions that if put in place could eventually make it nearly impossible for TikTok's legions of younger fans to use the app. Mr. Trump said if completed the deal would create a new company likely to be based in Texas...

TikTok said Oracle and Walmart could acquire up to a cumulative 20% stake in the new company in a financing round to be held before an initial public offering of stock, which Walmart said could happen within the next year. Oracle's stake would be 12.5%, and Walmart's would be 7.5%, the companies said in separate statements. The deal will make Oracle responsible for hosting all TikTok's U.S. user data and securing computer systems to ensure U.S. national security requirements are satisfied. Walmart said it will provide its ecommerce, fulfillment, payments and other services to the new company. "We are pleased that the proposal by TikTok, Oracle, and Walmart will resolve the security concerns of the U.S. administration and settle questions around TikTok's future in the U.S.," TikTok said in a statement.
"According to a source close to the matter, ByteDance would keep the rest of the shares," reports a public TV station in Australia. "But since the Chinese company is 40 per cent owned by American investors, TikTok would eventually be majority American-owned."

Today America's Treasury Department told CBS that the deal still needs to close with Oracle and Walmart, and those documents and conditions then need to be approved by government regulatory. But because of today's announcement, "the department said Saturday that it will delay the barring of TikTok from U.S. app stores until Sept. 27 at 11:59 p.m."