An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinDesk: Ukraine's government has chosen the Stellar blockchain network as a platform to build a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Announced Monday, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to build out a "virtual assets ecosystem and national digital currency of Ukraine." The National Bank of Ukraine has been researching the possibility of CBDC implementation since 2017, and the Stellar partnership will now be the basis of its virtual currency development, according to Digital Transformation and IT Deputy Minister Oleksandr Bornyakov.

"The Ministry of Digital Transformation is working on creating the legal environment for the development of virtual assets in Ukraine," Bornyakov said in a statement. "We believe our cooperation with the Stellar Development Foundation will contribute to development of the virtual asset industry and its integration into the global financial ecosystem." Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon said the partnership with Ukraine's government and other stakeholders to digitize the hryvnia will officially launch this month. "We've been in conversations with governments and institutions all over the world about the key considerations for issuing CBDCs. It's important to remember many, if not all, of these organizations weren't designed to be technology companies and that they have many audiences that they are supporting," Dixon said via an email. "That makes a public-private partnership so essential to getting this right."

Uber apparently squandered an estimated $100 million on third-party digital advertising campaigns. Input Mag reports: Former Sleeping Giants alum and co-founder of Check My Ads, Nandini Jammi, caught most of us up on the whole situation yesterday in a lengthy Twitter thread detailing just how Uber, the poster child of startup capitalism's unethical robber baron mentality, managed to recently waste a mind-boggling $100 million in pointless digital advertising campaigns through a host of blatantly shady ad networks. One such instance involved launching "'battery saver' style apps in Google Play, giving them root access to your phone." Upon typing "Uber" into Google Play, the service "auto-fires a click to make it look like you clicked on an Uber ad and attribute the install to themselves."

It's a comprehensive rundown worth reading in its entirety, but to make a long story short: after getting publicly roasted for continually advertising on Breitbart -- Stephen Miller's racist, chauvinistic fever dream billing itself as a "news" outlet -- Uber's former Head of Acquisition, Kevin Frisch, realized the company could trim roughly 3/4 of its entire online advertising budget and see next to no change in consumer engagement. No, seriously. Over $100 million that could have been reallocated towards such "costly" investments like sick leave, overtime, health insurance, or any number of the other bare minimum workforce benefits Uber routinely denies its gig employees.

Discovery+, the new streaming channel from Discovery, is officially available in the U.S.. "The list of places where you can download Discovery+ is extensive, with almost every popular platform but the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 included in the company's launch slate," reports Engadget. From the report: Most notably, you can access the app through Amazon Fire TV streaming devices and Fire Edition TVs -- with support for Prime Video Channels coming at a later date. At launch, Discovery also supports Roku devices and 2017 and later Samsung Smart TVs. Typically, Amazon Fire TV and Roku are left out of streaming launches. Of course, you can also access Discovery+ through Apple TV and Android TV if you have those instead.

Discovery+ will set you back $5 per month for the base tier. It's an extra $2 every month if you don't want to see any ads. At launch, you'll find content from channels like HGTV, Food Network, Animal Planet, TLC and of course Discovery. The $5 and $7 price tags put Discovery+ in competition with other specialty services like Peacock and Disney+, which may make it a tough sell for some people.

According to The Wall Street Journal, failed mobile-first streaming service Quibi is in advanced talks to sell the rights to its content library to Roku for an undisclosed price. The Verge reports: If it were to happen, the deal could give the Roku Channel exclusive access to Quibi's slate of programming. None of Quibi's shows ever really took off, but Roku may feel that the content would stand a better chance when available on the best-selling streaming devices in the US.

Quibi announced it was shutting down back in October, just six months after its much-hyped launch. The service was headed by former HP CEO Meg Whitman and former Disney chairman and movie producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, who managed to raise almost $2 billion in funding before the app was released. Katzenberg had already tried to get companies including Facebook and NBCUniversal to pick up Quibi programming ahead of its demise, according to The Information.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Singapore has confirmed its law enforcers will be able to access the country's COVID-19 contact tracing data to aid in their criminal investigations. To date, more than 4.2 million residents or 78% of the local population have adopted the TraceTogether contact tracing app and wearable token, which is one of the world's highest penetration rates. [...] In its efforts to ease privacy concerns, the Singapore government had stressed repeatedly that COVID-19 data would "never be accessed unless the user tests positive" for the virus and was contacted by the contact tracing team. Personal data such as unique identification number and mobile number also would be substituted by a random permanent ID and stored on a secured server.

However, the Singapore government now has confirmed local law enforcement will be able to access the data for criminal investigations. Under the Criminal Procedure Code, the Singapore Police Force can obtain any data and this includes TraceTogether data, according to Minister of State for Home Affairs, Desmond Tan. He was responding to a question posed during parliament Monday on whether the TraceTogether data would be used for criminal probes and the safeguards governing the use of such data. Tan said the Singapore government was the "custodian" of the contact tracing data and "stringent measures" had been established to safeguard the personal data. "Examples of these measures include only allowing authorized officers to access the data, using such data only for authorized purposes, and storing the data on a secured data platform," he said. He added that public officers who knowingly disclose the data without authorization or misuse the data may be fined up to SG$5,000 or jailed up to two years, or both.

Asked if police use of the data violated the TraceTogether privacy pledge, Tan said: "We do not preclude the use of TraceTogether data in circumstances where citizens' safety and security is or has been affected, and this applies to all other data as well." He noted that "authorized police officers" may invoke the Criminal Procedure Code to access TraceTogether data for such purposes as well as for criminal investigation, but this data would, otherwise, be used only for contact tracing and to combat the spread of COVID-19.

The reason why the Windows UI has a 32GB limit on the formatting of FAT32 volumes is because retired Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer "said so." The confession comes "in the latest of a series of anecdotes hosted on his YouTube channel Dave's Garage," reports The Register. From the report: In the closing years of the last century, Plummer was involved in porting the Windows 95 shell to Windows NT. Part of that was a redo of Windows Format ("it had to be a replacement and complete rewrite since the Win95 system was so markedly different") and, as well as the grungy lower-level bits going down to the API, he also knocked together the classic, stacked Format dialog over the course of an hour of UI creativity. As he admired his design genius, he pondered what cluster sizes to offer the potential army of future Windows NT 4.0 users. The options would define the size of the volume; FAT32 has a set maximum number of clusters in a volume. Making those clusters huge would make for an equally huge volume, but at a horrifying cost in terms of wasted space: select a 32-kilobyte cluster size and even the few bytes needed by a "Hello World" file would snaffle the full 32k.

"We call it 'Cluster Slack'," explained Plummer, "and it is the unavoidable waste of using FAT32 on large volumes." "How large is too large? At what point do you say, 'No, it's too inefficient, it would be folly to let you do that'? That is the decision I was faced with." At the time, the largest memory card Plummer could lay his hands on for testing had an impossibly large 16-megabyte capacity. "Perhaps I multiplied its size by a thousand," he said, "and then doubled it again for good measure, and figured that would more than suffice for the lifetime of NT 4.0. I picked the number 32G as the limit and went on with my day."

While Microsoft's former leader may have struggled to put clear water between himself and the infamous "640K" quote of decades past, Plummer was clear that his decision process was aimed at NT 4.0 and would just be a temporary thing until the UI was revised. "That, however, is a fatal mistake on my part that no one should be excused for making. With the perfect being the enemy of the good, 'good enough' has persisted for 25 years and no one seems to have made any substantial changes to Format since then..." ... However, as Plummer put it: "At the end of the day, it was a simple lack of foresight combined with the age-old problem of the temporary solution becoming de-facto permanent."

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the United States, a court in London has ruled. The BBC reports: The judge blocked the request because of concerns over Mr Assange's mental health and risk of suicide in the U.S. Mr Assange, who is wanted over the publication of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011, says the case is politically motivated. Expressing disappointment at the ruling, the U.S. justice department noted that its legal arguments had prevailed. Its position is that the leaks broke the law and endangered lives.

"While we are extremely disappointed in the court's ultimate decision, we are gratified that the United States prevailed on every point of law raised," the justice department said. The U.S. authorities have 14 days in which to lodge an appeal and are expected to do so. Mr Assange will now be taken back to Belmarsh Prison -- where he is being held -- and a full application for his bail will be made on Wednesday. His lawyer Ed Fitzgerald QC told the court there would be evidence to show Mr Assange would not abscond. [...]

If convicted in the U.S., Mr Assange faces a possible penalty of up to 175 years in jail, his lawyers have said. However the U.S. government said the sentence was more likely to be between four and six years. Mr Assange faces an 18-count indictment from the U.S. government, accusing him of conspiring to hack into U.S. military databases to acquire sensitive secret information relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which was then published on the Wikileaks website. He says the information exposed abuses by the U.S. military. But U.S. prosecutors say the leaks of classified material endangered lives, and so the U.S. sought his extradition from the UK.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Ether, the native currency of the Ethereum network and the second most valuable cryptocurrency, has soared above $1,000 for the first time since 2018. The rise is part of a broad cryptocurrency boom inspired by the continued rise in bitcoin's price. Last month, bitcoin rose above $20,000, smashing its previous all-time record of around $19,500. Since then, it has continued to rise, breaking above $30,000 in recent days. As I write this, one bitcoin is worth around $31,000.

Cryptocurrencies tend to rise and fall together. So it's not surprising that other virtual currencies are also on the rise. Ether has seen dramatic gains over the last year. At the start of 2020, one ether was worth around $140. The price rose to around $600 in late November, the same month bitcoin started flirting with a new record. In the last few days, ether has been on a tear, rising from $600 on Christmas Day to more than $1,000 today. It isn't just ether. Litecoin, one of the oldest "altcoins," has seen its value triple over the last three months to $150. Bitcoin Cash, a variant of bitcoin that's optimized for high transaction volumes, has nearly doubled over the same period and is now worth $400. Polkadot and Tether have also seen continued growth in recent months.

The one exception is XRP, the currency of the Ripple network. "Just before Christmas, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged two Ripple executives with selling unregistered securities," reports Ars. "The announcement has caused some US cryptocurrency exchanges to stop offering trades in XRP. XRP has lost two-thirds of its value since a November peak." Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., also suspended trading in XRP.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Malware operators who want to know the location of the victims they infect usually rely on a simple technique where they grab the victim's IP address and check it against an IP-to-geo database like MaxMind's GeoIP to get a victim's approximate geographical location. While the technique isn't very accurate, it is still the most reliable method of determining a user's actual physical location based on data found on their computer. However, in a blog post last month, Xavier Mertens, a security researcher with the SANS Internet Storm Center, said he discovered a new malware strain that is using a second technique on top of the first. This second technique relies on grabbing the infected user's BSSID. Known as a "Basic Service Set Identifier," the BSSID is basically the MAC physical address of the wireless router or access point the user is using to connect via WiFi. You can see the BSSID on Windows systems by running the command: netsh wlan show interfaces | find "BSSID" Mertens said the malware he discovered was collecting the BSSID and then checking it against a free BSSID-to-geo database maintained by Alexander Mylnikov.

Epic Games is buying an old shopping mall -- with nearly one million square feet of space -- and plans to convert it into its new global headquarters by 2024. From a report: The deal gives Epic the 980,000 square foot Cary Towne Center for $95 million. Cary Towne Center is about 2 miles from Epic's current HQ. Epic Games has been based in Cary, North Carolina since 1999, and has 2,200 employees in its global workforce. The company, best known for developing the Unreal Engine and Fortnite, has about two dozen subsidiaries and studios in other locations around the world, acquiring or establishing more than half of them since Fortnite Battle Royale launched at the end of 2017. Sitting on 87 acres, Cary Towne Center, like many shopping malls in the United States, has struggled to remain open as anchor tenants have left or closed altogether thanks to shopping trends moving online. WRAL-TV of Raleigh noted that only a few stores remain open there, and much of the mall is blocked off. Its current owners picked it up in 2019 for $31 million, then got the Cary Town Council to approve its rezoning, which would permit office use, hotel rooms, and multi-family housing in addition to commercial space.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma's absence from public view in the past two months, including missing the final episode of a TV show on which he was to appear as a judge, has fueled social media speculation over his whereabouts amid a Chinese regulatory clampdown on his sprawling business empire. From a report: China's highest-profile entrepreneur has not appeared in a public setting since a late October forum in Shanghai where he blasted China's regulatory system in a speech that put him on a collision course with officials, resulting in the suspension of a $37 billion IPO of Alibaba's Ant Group fintech arm. The Financial Times reported on Friday that Ma was replaced as a judge in the final episode in November of a game show for entrepreneurs called Africa's Business Heroes.

An Alibaba spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday that the change was due to a scheduling conflict, declining further comment. While news coverage of Ma's absence from public view triggered speculation on Twitter, which is blocked in China, it was not a significant trending topic on social media in mainland China, where sensitive topics are subject to censorship. Chinese regulators have zeroed in on Ma's businesses since his October speech including launching an antitrust probe into Alibaba and ordering Ant to shake up its lending and other consumer finance businesses including the creation of a separate holding company to meet capital requirements.

Microsoft is planning a "sweeping visual rejuvenation of Windows" that is designed to signal to users of the operating system that "Windows is BACK." From a report: That's according to a job listing posted by Microsoft recently, advertising for a software engineering role in the Windows Core User Experiences team: "On this team, you'll work with our key platform, Surface, and OEM partners to orchestrate and deliver a sweeping visual rejuvenation of Windows experiences to signal to our customers that Windows is BACK and ensure that Windows is considered the best user OS experience for customers." Microsoft quietly removed references to this "sweeping visual rejuvenation" this morning, after several Windows enthusiasts spotted the job listing over the weekend.

Haven, the joint venture formed by three of America's most powerful companies to lower costs and improve outcomes in health care, is disbanding after three years, CNBC has learned exclusively. From a report: The company began informing employees Monday that it will shut down by the end of next month, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Many of the Boston-based firm's 57 workers are expected to be placed at Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway or JPMorgan Chase as the firms each individually push forward in their efforts, and the three companies are still expected to collaborate informally on healthcare projects, the people said. The announcement three years ago that the CEOs of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase had teamed up to tackle one of the biggest problems facing corporate America -- high and rising costs for employee health care -- sent shock waves throughout the world of medicine. Shares of healthcare companies tumbled on fears about how the combined might of leaders in technology and finance could wring costs out of the system. Brooke Thurston, a spokeswoman for Haven, confirmed the company's plans to close.

Apple appears to be moving along in its development of a foldable iPhone, according to new rumors. The company has apparently asked its Foxconn, its biggest iPhone supplier, to create two prototype foldable shells with displays. From a report: As reported by Tom's Guide on Sunday, which cites Taiwanese website United Daily News, Apple's two prototypes reflect two very different approaches to foldable phones in the industry. Tom's Guide states that one of the designs is similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, which let us remember has a flexible screen with crease in the middle and can be folded. The other is closer to Microsoft's Surface Duo, the outlet notes, a device with two screens that resembles a book and is held together by a hinge. It's not clear whether Apple is working on two separate foldable phones or whether it's testing various ideas for the final new type of iPhone, per Tom's Guide.

Slack is down on the first full work day of 2021. From a report: The company said Monday morning "customers may have trouble loading channels or connecting to Slack at this time. Our team is investigating and we will follow up with more information as soon as we have it. We apologize for any disruption caused." The company is reporting issues with connecting to the service and messaging.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the United States, a court in London has ruled. From a report: The judge blocked the request because of concerns over Mr Assange's mental health and risk of suicide in the US. The 49-year-old is wanted over the publication of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011. The US claims the leaks broke the law and endangered lives. Mr Assange has fought the extradition and says the case is politically motivated. The US authorities have 14 days in which to lodge an appeal and are expected to do so. Mr Assange will now be taken back to Belmarsh Prison -- where he is being held -- and a full application for his bail will be made on Wednesday. His lawyer Ed Fitzgerald QC told the court there will be evidence to show Mr Assange will not abscond. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that while US prosecutors met the tests for Mr Assange to be extradited for trial, the US was incapable of preventing him from attempting to take his own life.

Supply issues have hamstrung the rollout of the latest generation of video game consoles. Even now, nearly two months after the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S released, Microsoft is still scrambling to meet demand and has reportedly reached out to chipmaker AMD to fast-track production on its end. From a report: AMD manufactures the GPU and CPU for both consoles, so if it's able to push out its chips faster, Microsoft could, in theory, churn out more consoles by extension. As spotted by VGC, Microsoft is "working as hard as we can" to pump out more systems and has even contacted AMD for help, according to Xbox head Phil Spencer in a recent appearance on the Major Nelson Radio podcast hosted by Xbox Live director of programming Larry Hyrb "I get some people [asking], 'why didn't you build more? Why didn't you start earlier? Why didn't you ship them earlier?' I mean, all of those things," Spencer said. "It's really just down to physics and engineering. We're not holding them back: We're building them as fast as we can. We have all the assembly lines going. I was on the phone last week with [CEO and president] Lisa Su at AMD [asking], 'How do we get more? How do we get more?' So it's something that we're constantly working on."

Employees of Google and parent company Alphabet announced the creation of a union on Monday, escalating years of confrontation between workers and management of the internet giant. From a report: The Alphabet Workers Union said it will be open to all employees and contractors, regardless of their role or classification. It will collect dues, pay organizing staff and have an elected board of directors. The unionizing effort, a rare campaign within a major U.S. technology company, is supported by the Communications Workers of America as part of a recent tech-focused initiative known as CODE-CWA. Googlers who join the Alphabet Workers Union will also be members of CWA Local 1400. The group, which represents more than 200 workers in the U.S., plans to take on issues including compensation, employee classification and the kinds of work Google engages in. "We will hire skilled organizers to ensure all workers at Google know they can work with us if they actually want to see their company reflect their values," Dylan Baker, software engineer at Google, said in a statement. A letter from the union organizers published in the New York Times said workplace concerns at the company have been dismissed by executives for too long. Google has clashed with some employees in recent years over contracts with the military, the different treatment of contract workers and a rich exit package for an executive ousted for alleged sexual harassment.

71-year-old Hugh Pickens (Slashdot reader #49,171) is a physicist who explored for oil in the Amazon jungle, commissioned microwave communications systems in Saudi Arabia, and built satellite control stations for Goddard Space Flight Center around the world including Australia, Antarctica, and Guam.

After retiring in 1999, he wrote over 1,400 Slashdot posts, and in the site's 23-year history still remains one of its two all-time most active submitters (behind only long-time Slashdot reader theodp). Today theodp shares an article by Hugh Pickens: I am a Covid Survivor," writes former Slashdot contributor extraordinaire Hugh Pickens (aka pickens, aka Hugh Pickens writes, aka Hugh Pickens DOT Com, aka HughPickens.com, aka pcol, aka ...). "I got the Covid six weeks ago and yesterday I was declared virus free. I had what was called a moderate case of Covid. I was never hospitalized. I was never in any real danger of death. But I was in bed for three weeks.

"It knocked me on my ass. I have been talking about my Covid when I go out and a lot of people are interested in what it really means to have a moderate case of Covid. I don't claim to speak for every Covid patient. I certainly can't speak for the ones who went into the hospital and are on ventilators. But I think the majority of people have a moderate case of Covid so I thought I would write this up for people that were interested."
During those three consecutive weeks in bed, "I guess I ate Jell-O for about two weeks..." Pickens writes. "I was laying in bed all day long. I was sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day..." He lost 25 pounds — and vividly describes having nightmares "every night like clockwork." But the essay ends with him committed to making the most of his second chance. "I'm only going to do what's important from now on...

"I'm 71 years old and I may have five more years or ten but I am going to live every day like it's my last."

"An enormous black hole keeps slipping through astronomers' nets..." reports Space.com: The big galaxy at the core of the cluster Abell 2261, which lies about 2.7 billion light-years from Earth, should have an even larger central black hole — a light-gobbling monster that weighs as much as 3 billion to 100 billion suns, astronomers estimate from the galaxy's mass. But the exotic object has evaded detection so far. For instance, researchers previously looked for X-rays streaming from the galaxy's center, using data gathered by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in 1999 and 2004. X-rays are a potential black-hole signature: As material falls into a black hole's maw, it accelerates and heats up tremendously, emitting lots of high-energy X-ray light. But that hunt turned up nothing.

Now, a new study has conducted an even deeper search for X-rays in the same galaxy, using Chandra observations from 2018... But the Chandra data didn't reveal any significant X-ray sources, either in the galactic core or in big clumps of stars farther afield. So the mystery of the missing supermassive black hole persists.

That mystery could be solved by Hubble's successor — NASA's big, powerful James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in October 2021. If James Webb doesn't spot a black hole in the galaxy's heart or in one of its bigger stellar clumps, "then the best explanation is that the black hole has recoiled well out of the center of the galaxy," NASA officials wrote.

CNET reveals 2020's most popular show among video pirates: It probably won't come as a surprise that Disney Plus smash hit series The Mandalorian has won the (unfortunate) title of most-pirated TV show of 2020 — using popular torrenting site BitTorrent. According to analysis from TorrentFreak (via IndieWire), Game of Thrones was the most-pirated TV show seven years running. But the HBO series ended in 2019, leaving The Mandalorian to improve its ranking from third to No. 1.
The rest of the list, from IndieWire: Prime Video's irreverent superhero series "The Boys" is at number two, HBO's "Westworld" is number three, Prime Video's "Vikings" is number four, CBS' "Star Trek: Picard" is five, followed by Adult Swim's "Rick and Morty," AMC's "The Walking Dead," HBO's "The Outsider," CW's "The Arrow," and CW's "The Flash."