"Toyota has apologised for the 'overconfidence' of a self-driving bus," reports the Guardian — after the slow-moving bus hit a Paralympic judo expert. Toyota added that it would temporarily suspend the service, with Toyota's president saying the event "shows that autonomous vehicles are not yet realistic for normal roads." The Japanese athlete, Aramitsu Kitazono, will be unable to compete in his 81kg category this weekend after being left with cuts and bruises following the impact with the "e-Palette" vehicle...

As part of its sponsorship of Tokyo 2020, Toyota has been showcasing its autonomous vehicles via a shuttle service, which has been running around the clock in the athletes' village. On Thursday, however, one of the buses pulled away from a T-junction and drove through a pedestrian crossing while Kitazono, a visually impaired athlete, was walking across.

Tokyo police said that vehicle operators had told them they "were aware that a person was there but thought [the person] would [realize that a bus was coming] and stop crossing the [street]", according to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
CNN cites reports that the vehicle was under manual control at the time of the accident, adding that the vehicle "was barely moving, but it still managed to collide with a visually-impaired athlete at the Paralympic Games, raising potential concerns about the limitations of autonomous driving technology."

"While workers who want to stay at home forever have been especially vocal about their demands, a silent majority of Americans do want to get back to the office, at least for a few days a week..." reports the New York Times. The article, shared by long-time Slashdot reader gollum123, cites the opinions of workers in a variety of industries. In a national survey of more than 950 workers, conducted in mid-August by Morning Consult on behalf of The New York Times, 31 percent said they would prefer to work from home full time. By comparison, 45 percent said they wanted to be in a workplace or an office full time. The remaining 24 percent said they wanted to split time between work and home... The data intelligence company's findings echoed recent internal surveys by employers like Google and Twitter, as well as outside surveys by firms like Eden Workplace. Among those craving the routines of office life and cubicle chatter: social butterflies, managers, new hires eager to meet colleagues, and people with noisy or crowded homes...

Certainly, some people have thrived in their new remote work lives. They saved time and money, and sometimes increased productivity. The degree to which employees have embraced permanent remote or hybrid work models has been "stunning" to company executives, said Tsedal Neeley, a Harvard Business School professor who has studied remote work for decades. But for others, Professor Neeley said, it has removed needed barriers between work and home life, increased a sense of isolation and led to burnout. "Some people just dislike the screen — their physicality and their proximity to others is a big part of what work looks like," she said.
In the Times' article, here's how one 23-year-old recent college graduate starting at Google described their own dilemma.

"If we don't get a really solid foundation at this company in our first six months, our first year, what foot does that leave us on for the rest of our time at the company?"

Possibly anticipating some new regulations, America's Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating "gamification and behavioral prompts used by online brokerages that encourage trading," reports CNBC.

And SEC chairman Gary Gensler has specifically requested public input on two questions: First, the SEC chair wants to know how the financial regulator should protect investors against a potential conflict of interest. Online brokerages generate profits when their customers trade more often. Robinhood Markets, for example, makes money in part by sending its customers' orders to high-frequency traders in exchange for cash. That process is itself controversial and known on Wall Street as payment for order flow. But if game-like prompts or congratulatory messages from online brokerages cause customers to make more trades — and especially if more trades result in poorer portfolio performance at slightly worse prices — should the SEC intervene?

Gensler's second key question is a bit more cerebral. In essence, the SEC wants to answer: If brokerages' game-like or predictive prompts assume optimal outcomes and impact how often customers trade, should the regulator consider those in-app prompts as formal investment recommendations or investment advice?
Or, as Barrons puts it, "Critics say that some stock-trading apps look more like online games or gambling services, and their graphic interfaces are coercing users into making bad decisions."

Meanwhile, MarketWatch (via Dow Jones Newswires) reports on another issue: "According to a new survey from consumer finance website MagnifyMoney, 32% of U.S. investors say they have made trades while drunk." Gen Z members fell into the trap the most of any generation, with 59% confessing to drunk trading, while 9% of baby boomers admitted to trading under the influence. This can be combined with the rise in "emotionally charged" investing that traders say they would later regret. Per the survey, 66% of Americans admit to making impulsive investing decisions... Entering trade orders on mobile devices has assuredly made stock trading easier to complete while engaged in other tasks, including imbibing, but why does it seemingly impact younger investors more? According to the Addiction Center, an informational group for people struggling with substance-use disorders and co-occurring behavioral and mental-health disorders, the gamification interface of trading apps like Robinhood could be a factor.
A Robinhood spokesperson told MarketWatch their platform was designed "to remove historical barriers to investing and open financial markets to millions upon millions of people previously left behind.

"We are proud to expand access to the financial system and enable everyday people to learn and invest responsibly."

"The director of a tiny UK company has apologised after sending letters to businesses suggesting they had infringed his patents that he claimed covered an age-old web standard," writes The Register.

LeeLynx shares their report: The tech in question is the content security policy (CSP) mechanism that websites use to protect their visitors from cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks and similar exploits that steal data and hijack accounts. Specifically, the cryptographic nonce [number-used-once] feature of CSP to stop unauthorized scripts from running. Datawing Ltd sent a number of letters to small businesses this month claiming to own one UK and one US patent on CSP and its use of a nonce.

After an initial wave of alarm and outrage on Twitter when the letters surfaced, The Register tracked down their author: a penitent William Coppock... "What a stupid plonker, all I've done," he sighed, adding that he has six children and has been diagnosed with cancer. Applying for the UK and US patents cost him his "life savings," he said, adding: "I didn't intend any harm to come to anyone. Maybe I've just got to sell or give this thing to Mozilla...."

[H]e denied to The Register that he was a patent troll. A law firm had checked over the letter and the "patent infringement outline" document before he sent them, he claimed. Coppock also apologised to all who received his letters and urged them to contact him if they had any questions about it.

We have asked the law firm Coppock named for comment on the advice he says it gave him and will update this article if we hear back from it.

Infosecurity magazine reports: Some of the world's biggest tech companies have committed tens of billions of dollars to improving supply chain security, closing industry skills gaps and driving security awareness among the public, according to the White House.

As reported by Infosecurity yesterday, the Biden administration welcomed the CEOs of Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM and others to a meeting yesterday to discuss the "whole-of-nation" effort needed to address cybersecurity threats." The result of that encounter has been a series of commitments from these firms, including $10bn from Google over the next five years to expand zero trust and improve supply chain and open source security. The tech giant will apparently also help 100,000 Americans earn "digital skills certificates."

IBM said it would train 150,000 people in cyber skills over the coming three years and focus on improving the diversity of the security workforce, while Microsoft has committed $20bn over five years to drive security by design, and $150m for federal, local and state governments. Apple will establish a new program to improve supply chain security, including among its 9000 US suppliers, with multi-factor authentication (MFA), vulnerability remediation, event logging and incident response all playing a key role. Amazon is making MFA devices available to all AWS customers and rolling out the security training it offers employees to the general public.

Aside from these commitments, the White House announced the expansion of its Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity Initiative, from the electricity sector to natural gas pipelines, and said the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would develop a new framework for supply chain security. In another potentially significant move, insurer Resilience said it would require policyholders to meet a threshold of cybersecurity best practice as a condition of receiving coverage — something experts have been demanding for some time across the industry.
NextGov.com also quotes the president's remarks about a cybersecurity executive order issued May 12th: "Because of that order, government will only buy tech products that meet certain cybersecurity standards, which will have a ripple effect across the software industry, in our view, ultimately improving security for all Americans,"

"When residents of an affluent estate community in Alberta started hearing noise from a nearby power plant, they didn't expect their complaints of sleepless nights would lead to a months-long investigation that would find a bitcoin mining operation had set up shop without approval," reports the CBC: Now, Link Global, the company behind the site, is being ordered by the province's utility commission to shut down two plants until it can prove it's allowed to operate — a move the company says will cost jobs and cause the oil and gas infrastructure in which it operates to sit dormant....

Vancouver-based Link Global had set up four 1.25 MW gas generators at the site, pulling power from a dormant natural gas well owned by Calgary-based company MAGA Energy. The natural gas powers thousands of computer servers that run programs to "mine" digital currency... Work on the plant began in August 2020, and by fall — when neighbours started to get annoyed — it was operating at full capacity. There was just one problem: The company hadn't notified neighbours of its plans. Or the county. Or the provincial utilities commission — which allows power plants to be set up without approval if they meet several conditions, including only generating power for the company's own use and proving the plant has no adverse effects on people or the environment...

Alberta is littered with nearly 200,000 dormant or abandoned oil and gas wells, often because they're no longer economically viable. It has raised the spectre that landowners and taxpayers could be on the hook for the cleanup costs, which the province estimates could be up to $30 billion, as well as prompted a push to find other uses for the facilities, such as powering cryptocurrency operations. Stephen Jenkins, Link Global's CEO, said some of that abandoned energy infrastructure, is at risk of leaking methane — a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide. "We look at, OK, what can we do to use this in a beneficial way ... I don't want to say we're in the business of methane destruction, but we're in the business of beneficial use of that potential methane-generating source. You combust it properly. You don't flare it, and you control those emissions," Jenkins said...

And though the facility employs only four people, Jenkins said it's important to him to employ locally and give former oil and gas workers a path into other careers. The Sturgeon County plant's supervisor is a former pipefitter; he's now a bitcoin pro and an expert at keeping the plant online, Jenkins said. "It's a perfect use of people's skills," he said.

Of course, it's not all altruism. The company has said for every 10 MW of power, it can generate about 1.2 bitcoins per day.
Last Friday the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) ruled that the plant had indeed been violating their regulatory requirements, and would now also have to suffer a financial penalty which the CBC reported as "a $50,000 to $75,000 fine, reduced by up to 50% because Link Global admitted to breaking the rules..."

"More penalties could be on the way. The AUC will now review whether specific sanctions should be imposed against Link Global for operating without approval — a decision on that is expected this fall."

The CBC adds that another Link Global plant was also found to be "set up without the AUC's prior approval."

The New York Times tells the story of an Indiana physician spreading misinformation about the pandemic. Public health officials say statements like his have contributed to America's vaccine hesitancy and resistance to mask-wearing, exacerbating the pandemic. His videos "have amassed nearly 100 million likes and shares on Facebook, 6.2 million views on Twitter, at least 2.8 million views on YouTube and over 940,000 video views on Instagram." His talk's popularity points to one of the more striking paradoxes of the pandemic. Even as many doctors fight to save the lives of people sick with Covid-19, a tiny number of their medical peers have had an outsize influence at propelling false and misleading information about the virus and vaccines.

Now there is a growing call among medical groups to discipline physicians spreading incorrect information. The Federation of State Medical Boards, which represents the groups that license and discipline doctors, recommended last month that states consider action against doctors who share false medical claims, including suspending or revoking medical licenses. The American Medical Association says spreading misinformation violates the code of ethics that licensed doctors agree to follow.

"When a doctor speaks, people pay attention," said Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, president of the Federation of State Medical Boards. "The title of being a physician lends credibility to what people say to the general public. That's why it is so important that these doctors don't spread misinformation."

Futurism reports: Japan's space agency JAXA has announced that is has successfully demonstrated the operation of a "rotary detonation engine" in space, a world's first.

Such an engine uses a series of controlled explosions that travel around a circular channel at its base. The result is a massive amount of thrust coming from a much smaller engine using significantly less fuel — a potential game changer for deep space exploration, according to JAXA. It's a lucrative endeavor and Japan isn't the only country pursuing the idea. Researchers across the U.S. are testing out the technology to make rockets both lighter and more environmentally friendly...

"We will aim to put the technology into practical use in about five years,"Jiro Kasahara, a Nagoya University professor who is working on the technology with JAXA, told the Japan Times last month.
Ars Technica reports that detonation engines should theoretically weigh less than traditional rocket engines &mdash and that JAXA "plans to use data from this test for potential development of detonation engines for kick stages as well as first- and second-stage rocket engines."

Futurism adds that in the same flight JAXA also successfully tested a second "pulse detonation engine."

"T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert published an open apology to customers Friday after hackers stole more than 50 million users' personal data, including their Social Security numbers and driver's license information," reports NBC News: "The last two weeks have been humbling for all of us at T-Mobile," he wrote. "To say we are disappointed and frustrated that this happened is an understatement."

The incident is the fourth known breach at T-Mobile since 2018, and by far the largest. The full count of how many customers had their data stolen is unclear, but the company said last week it had identified more than 53 million affected customers, most of them on subscription plans. It also included an unspecified number of "prospective" users who are not T-Mobile customers...

It is unclear why T-Mobile was storing customers' driver's license information and Social Security numbers without encrypting them in a way that would make it difficult or impossible for hackers to see them even if they stole them. Jackie Singh, a cybersecurity consultant, said it was irresponsible on the part of T-Mobile, especially for hard-to-change sensitive personal data like Social Security numbers.

"It is frankly bizarre to learn that in this day and age, a major telco continues to store critical customer data in plain text," she said. "Offering two years of credit monitoring services doesn't change the fact that harm was done to their customer base."
NBC says they spoke to the person identified as the perpetrator by the Wall Street Journal, who told them last week that he'd planned to sell the information on more than 100 million users for a hefty profit.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile's CEO now says they're alerting affected users and have set up a hub for victim services. Beneath the words "NOTICE OF DATA BREACH," it adds the tagline "Keeping you safe from cybersecurity threats. What you need to know and how we're protecting you."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: People who recovered from a bout of Covid-19 during one of the earlier waves of the pandemic appear to have a lower risk of contracting the delta variant than those who got two doses of the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech SE. The largest real-world analysis (PDF) comparing natural immunity -- gained from an earlier infection -- to the protection provided by one of the most potent vaccines currently in use showed that reinfections were much less common. The paper from researchers in Israel contrasts with earlier studies, which showed that immunizations offered better protection than an earlier infection, though those studies were not of the delta variant.

The results are good news for patients who already successfully battled Covid-19, but show the challenge of relying exclusively on immunizations to move past the pandemic. People given both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were almost six-fold more likely to contract a delta infection and seven-fold more likely to have symptomatic disease than those who recovered. The analysis also showed that protection from an earlier infection wanes with time. The risk of a vaccine-breakthrough delta case was 13-fold higher than the risk of developing a second infection when the original illness occurred during January or February 2021. That's significantly more than the risk for people who were ill earlier in the outbreak. Giving a single shot of the vaccine to those who had been previously infected also appeared to boost their protection. The long-term benefit of a booster dose of the inoculation, which has just recently begun in Israel, is unknown.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record, written by Catalin Cimpanu: The European Union's lead data protection supervisor has recommended on Thursday that personal data such as search queries & internet browsing history should not be used for the assessment of credit scores and creditworthiness. The recommendation comes from the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), an independent agency attached to the EU that advises policymakers "on all matters relating to the processing of personal data."a document published on Thursday. In addition, the agency advises that providers of financial and credit services should also not be allowed to use health data, such as cancer data, as well as any special category of personal data under Article 9 of the GDPR for the calculation of credit scores. The EDPS recommendations follow a recent blog post for the International Monetary Fund, where researchers see the possibility of using the data from your browsing, search, and purchase history to create a more accurate mechanism for determining the credit rating of an individual or business.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from SpaceNews: The National Natural Science Foundation of China has outlined a five-year project for researchers to study the assembly of ultra-large spacecraft. Scientists are being directed to meet the "urgent need" for the construction of ultra-large spacecraft. Preliminary research is to include studying the challenges of developing lightweight structures and subsequent on-orbit assembly and control. Though vague, the project would have practical applications for potential megaprojects including colossal space-based solar power stations. Such facilities would be based in geostationary orbit and span kilometers. These stations would collect solar energy and transmitting power to Earth through microwaves.

Kilometer-scale, ultra-large spacecraft are described as "major strategic aerospace equipment for the future use of space resources, exploration of the mysteries of the universe, and long-term habitation in orbit," according to the project outline within the mathematical and physical sciences attachment to the released document. The plan, if approved, would aim for commercial, on-orbit gigawatt-level power generation by 2050. This would require more than 100 super heavy-lift Long March 9 launches and around 10,000 tons of infrastructure, assembled in orbit, according to Long Lehao, a chief designer of China's Long March rocket series.

Eric Niiler writes via Wired: The landscape of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is both familiar and strange. Like Earth, Titan has rivers, lakes, clouds, and falling raindrops, as well as mountains of ice and a thick atmosphere. But instead of water, Titan's chemical cycle is composed of liquid methane, an organic molecule made from one carbon and four hydrogen atoms. Researchers believe this swirling mixture of methane, combined with the moon's nitrogen-laden atmosphere, surface water ice, and maybe some energy from either a volcano or a meteor impact, might have been the perfect recipe to create some kind of simple life form. [...] Now, A researcher has recreated Titan's environment in a small glass cylinder and mixed organic chemicals under the same temperature and pressure conditions found on that moon. Organic molecules that are liquid on Earth -- such as methane and benzene -- become solid icy mineral crystals on Titan because it's so cold, sometimes down to -290 Fahrenheit, according to Tomce Runcevski, an assistant professor of chemistry at Southern Methodist University, and the principal investigator on a study presented this week at the American Chemical Society meeting.

In a series of experiments, Runcevski took tiny glass tubes, sucked the air out of them with a pump, and added water ice. Then, one at a time, he added nitrogen, methane, its chemical relative ethane, and other organic compounds. Each time, he varied the composition of the chemical mixture inside the glass cylinders to see what would happen. He next applied pressure -- equivalent to about 1.45 times Earth's atmosphere -- and reduced the temperature by surrounding the vials with extremely cold air. [...] Under that moon's atmospheric pressure and temperature, he found that two organic molecules abundant on Titan and toxic to humans here on Earth -- acetonitrile and propionitrile -- become a single crystalline form. On Titan, these two molecules are formed by the combination of nitrogen and methane, plus energy from the sun, Saturn's magnetic field, and cosmic rays. Acetonitrile and propionitrile start as a gas in the atmosphere, then condense into aerosols, and then rain down onto the moon's surface and become chunks of solid minerals in several forms.

It's the first time that these two chemicals have been combined into a crystal shape on Earth under the conditions present on Titan. Another important finding is that the outer facet of the crystal also has a slight electric charge, or polarity, on its surface. That surface charge can attract other molecules such as water -- which would be necessary to form the building blocks of carbon-based life. This new experiment doesn't prove that there's life on Titan, but it means that researchers can discover new things about its weird, frigid surface environment even before the NASA Dragonfly spacecraft lands there.