A group of Google employees have put their name to a public letter calling on the company to abandon its plans for a Chinese search product that censors results. From a report: Project Dragonfly, as the initiative is known, would enable state surveillance at a time when the Chinese government is expanding controls over the population, according to the letter signed by at least 10 workers, predominately software engineers and researchers. The document also called on management to commit to transparency, be accountable and provide clear communication.

Ever since plans for Dragonfly emerged in August, Google parent Alphabet has been riven by internal dissent at the prospect of a search engine bending to Beijing's censorship. It was that sort of government control that prompted co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to effectively pull out of China in 2010 when it decided to stop removing controversial links from web queries. "We refuse to build technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be," the Google workers wrote in the letter. "Dragonfly in China would establish a dangerous precedent, one that would make it harder for Google to deny other countries similar concessions."

President Donald Trump on Monday rejected a central conclusion of a dire report on the economic costs of climate change released by his own administration. Associated Press reports: But economists said the National Climate Assessment's warning of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in global warming costs is pretty much on the money. Just look at last year with Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma, they said. Those three 2017 storms caused at least $265 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The climate report, quietly unveiled Friday, warned that natural disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. It said warming-charged extremes "have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration." The report noted the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015.

"The potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century," the report said. It added that if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue at current levels, labor costs in outdoor industries during heat waves could cost $155 billion in lost wages per year by 2090. The president said he read some of the report and "it's fine" but not the part about the devastating economic impact. "I don't believe it," Trump said, adding that if "every other place on Earth is dirty, that's not so good."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast is raising its controversial "Broadcast TV" and "Regional Sports Network" fees again on January 1, with the typical total price going from $14.50 to $18.25 a month. The newly raised broadcast TV fee will be $10 a month, and the sports fee will be $8.25 a month, Cord Cutters News reported last week. The new fee sizes are confirmed in a Comcast price list for the Atlanta market. The new price hikes will take effect in most of Comcast's regional markets across the U.S. on January 1, but some cities will get the increase later in 2019, a Comcast spokesperson told Ars. The fee sizes can vary by city based on which stations are available, so in some cases they could be less than $10 and $8.25, Comcast said.

The fees, which have become common in the industry, are controversial because they are not included in Comcast's advertised prices and because Comcast imposes fee increases even on customers who are under contract. The broadcast and sports fee increases will also be applied to customers who pay Comcast's promotional rates, which typically last one year, Comcast told Ars. Equipment rental fees are rising, too. Comcast last year raised its modem rental fee from $10 to $11 a month. The new price list for January 1 lists an "Internet/Voice Equipment Rental" fee as $13. Comcast confirmed to Ars that the modem rental fee is rising $2 a month. Customers can avoid that fee by purchasing their own modem.

A small group of Pixel owners in "select" U.S. cities are able to use Google's new Duplex feature to automatically make voice calls to restaurants and other businesses on their behalf. Referencing a demo from VentureBeat, The Verge notes that "the exchange between Duplex and a restaurant on the other side of the call is raising some early concerns about transparency." From the report: [Y]ou'll notice that Duplex never identifies itself as a robot. It never tells the person taking the call that they're interacting with an automated system. "Hi, I'm calling to make a reservation for a client. I'm calling from Google, so the call may be recorded," is what Duplex says to begin the conversation. And that little bit -- about the call coming "from Google" and potentially being recorded -- is the only disclosure that it ever provides. From then on, Duplex handles the requested dinner reservation smoothly.

This disclosure doesn't match up with a promotional video for Duplex that Google posted to YouTube back in June. In that example (embedded below), Duplex makes it very clear that it's a bot. "Hi, I'm the Google Assistant calling to make a reservation for a client. This automated call will be recorded." That's a much better approach. You're talking to the Google Assistant. It's an automated call, and it is being recorded; no maybes about it. The report notes that some Duplex calls -- such as the one VentureBeat included in their demo -- are actually handled by a human. "When a human operator at Google places a Duplex call, they don't necessarily disclose anything about Google Assistant or note it's an automated call," reports The Verge. "Because it's not. Not entirely, anyway. Google's Duplex tests involve a mix of the two; some are led by Googlers, while others let the AI steer. The majority of calls are the latter and automated, from what I'm told."

AmiMoJo writes: The International Space Station has been in orbit for 20 years, with the first module Zarya (Russian for "dawn") being launched on the 20th of November in 1998. To celebrate, the European Space Agency (ESA) has released the longest timelapse video made in space to date. "Captured by German astronaut Alexander Gerst, the time-lapse takes you on two trips around the world with labels marking countries that pass through the frame," reports PetaPixel. "Traveling at 28,800 km/h (17896 mph), it takes the station just 90 minutes to orbit the Earth. 21,375 individual photos shot on October 6th went into the video, which is played back at 12.5 times faster than real time."

Amazon announced Monday that it's making the machine learning courses it uses to train its engineers available to everybody for free. The course is tailored to four major groups -- developers, data scientists, data platform engineers and business professionals -- and it offers both foundational level lessons as well as more advanced instruction.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump suggested he could place a 10 percent tariff on iPhones and laptops imported from China, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Monday. He also said it's "highly unlikely" that he would delay an increase in tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on Jan. 1, just four days before a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. "Maybe. Maybe. Depends on what the rate is," the president said to The Wall Street Journal about the possible iPhone and laptop tariffs. "I mean, I can make it 10 percent, and people could stand that very easily."

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty joined a growing chorus of tech executives lambasting web platforms, like Google and Facebook, over their collection of user data and urged governments to target regulation at those companies. Bloomberg reports: Without naming company names, Rometty pointed to the "irresponsible handling of personal data by a few dominant consumer-facing platform companies" as the cause of a "trust crisis" between users and tech companies, according to an advanced copy of her remarks. Rometty's comments, given at a Brussels event with top EU officials Monday, echoed recent statements by Apple CEO Tim Cook, who in October slammed Silicon Valley rivals over their use of data, equating their services to "surveillance."

IBM meanwhile has seen revenue decline since Rometty took the CEO role in 2012, largely due to falling sales in existing hardware, software and services offerings. She has since been trying to steer IBM toward more modern businesses, such as the cloud, artificial intelligence, and security software. Seeking to separate IBM -- which operates primarily at a business-to-business level -- from the troubled tech companies, Rometty said governments should target regulation at consumer-facing web platforms, like social media firms and search engines. In particular, Rometty pushed for more measures around the transparency of artificial intelligence as well as controversial rules around platform liability.

Amazon is launching AWS RoboMaker, a cloud-based service that utilizes the open-source software Robot Operating System (ROS) to offer developers a place to develop and test robotics applications. TechCrunch reports: RoboMaker essentially serves as a platform to help speed up the time-consuming robotics development process. Among the tools offered by the service are Amazon's machine learning technologies and analytics that help create a simulation for real-world robotics development. The system can also be used to help manage fleet deployment for warehouse-style robotics designed to work in tandem. "AWS RoboMaker automatically provisions the underlying infrastructure and it downloads, compiles, and configures the operating system, development software, and ROS," the company writes. "AWS RoboMaker's robotics simulation makes it easy to set up large-scale and parallel simulations with pre-built worlds, such as indoor rooms, retail stores, and racing tracks, so developers can test their applications on-demand and run multiple simulations in parallel."

In an attempt to catch two cybercriminals, the FBI set up a fake FedEx website and created rigged Word documents, "both of which were designed to reveal the IP address of the fraudsters," reports Motherboard. From the report: The first case centers around Gorbel, a cranes and ergonomic lifting manufacturing company headquartered in Fishers, New York, according to court records. Here, the cybercriminals used a long, potentially confusing and official looking email address to pose as the company's CEO Brian Reh, and emailed the accounts team asking for payment for a new vendor. The fraudsters provided a W9 form of a particular company, and the finance department mailed a check for over $82,000. Gorbel noticed the fraudulent transaction, and brought in the FBI in July. Shortly after, Gorbel received other emails pretending to be Reh, asking for another transfer. This time, the finance department and FBI were ready. The FBI created a fake FedEx website and sent that to the target, in the hope it would capture the hacker's IP address, according to court records. The FBI even concocted a fake "Access Denied, This website does not allow proxy connections" page in order to entice the cybercriminal to connect from an identifiable address.

That FedEx unmasking attempt was not successful, it seems -- the cybercriminal checked the link from six different IP addresses, some including proxies -- and the FBI moved on to use a network investigative technique, or NIT, instead. NIT is an umbrella term the FBI uses for a variety of hacking approaches. The FBI attempted to locate the cybercriminals with a Word document containing an image that would connect to the FBI server and reveal the target's IP address, according to court records. The image was a screenshot of a FedEx tracking portal for a sent payment, the court records add. Motherboard also details the second case that occurred in August 2017, where a business in the Western District of New York received an email claiming to be from Invermar, a Chilean seafood vendor and one of the company's suppliers, according to court records: This email, posing as a known employee of Invermar, asked the victim to send funds to a new bank account. Whereas the legitimate Invermar domain ends with a .cl suffix, the hackers used one ending in .us. The business the hackers targeted apparently didn't notice the different suffix, and over the course of September and October wire transferred around $1.2 million to the cybercriminals, with the victim eventually able to recover $300,000 (the court documents don't specify how exactly, although a charge back seems likely). To determine where this criminal was located, the FBI also decided to deploy a NIT.

"The FBI will provide an email attachment to the victim which will be used to pose as a form to be filled out by the TARGET USER for future payment from the VICTIM," one court record reads. The NIT required the target to exit "protected mode," a setting in Microsoft Word that stops documents from connecting to the internet. The warrant application says the government does not believe it needs a warrant to send a target an embedded image, but out of an abundance of caution, added to the fact that the target will need to deliberately exit protected mode, the FBI applied for one anyway. Both NITs were designed to only obtain a target's IP address and User Agent String, according to the warrant applications. A User Agent String can reveal what operating system a target is using. Although signed by two different FBI Special Agents, both of the NIT warrant applications come out of the Cyber Squad, Buffalo Division, in Rochester, New York.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Chicago Tribune: General Motors will cut up to 14,000 workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it abandons many of its car models and restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles. The reduction includes about 8,000 white-collar employees, or 15 percent of GM's North American white-collar workforce. Some will take buyouts while others will be laid off. Four factories in the U.S. and one in Canada could be shuttered by the end of 2019 if the automaker and its unions don't come up with an agreement to allocate more work to those facilities, GM said in a statement Monday. Another two will close outside North America. The company has marked a sedan plant in Detroit, a compact car plant in Ohio, and another assembly plant outside Toronto for possible closure. Also at risk are two transmission plants, one outside Detroit and another in Baltimore. GM CEO Mary Barra said the company is "still hiring people with expertise in software and electric and autonomous vehicles, and many of those who will lose their jobs are now working on conventional cars with internal combustion engines," reports Dallas News. "Barra said the industry is changing rapidly and moving toward electric propulsion, autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing, and GM must adjust with it."

The restructuring comes as the U.S. and North American auto markets are shifting away from cars toward SUVs and trucks. "In October, almost 65 percent of new vehicles sold in the U.S. were trucks or SUVs," reports Chicago Tribune. "It was about 50 percent cars just five years ago."

According to Adobe Analytics, shoppers are expected to spend $7.8 billion on Cyber Monday, 18.3 percent more than in 2017. "The sweet spot will fall between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. EST, Adobe says, when it's anticipated shoppers will spend $1.6 billion -- about $200 million more than what retailers would see during a typical whole day any other time of the year," reports USA Today. From the report: But at a time when shoppers can buy products ranging from dolls to detergent by tapping on a tablet or smart phone, Black Friday and even Thanksgiving are gaining on Cyber Monday to become banner days for online shopping. Retailers saw $6.22 billion in digital sales on Black Friday, 23.6 percent more than last year and the most ever on that day, Adobe says. Meanwhile, Thanksgiving Day experienced the biggest single-day surge in online shopping history, leaping 28 percent over the holiday in 2017 to $3.7 billion.

Smartphones are increasingly the shopping gadget of choice. Mobile sales were expected to total more than $2 billion on Monday, Adobe says. And the more than $1 billion in smartphone sales on Thanksgiving were a record for that day. Besides enabling shoppers to make purchases any time, anywhere, shopping via smartphone has also taken off because it's become simpler and faster.

Democrats have proposed the "Stopping Grinch Bots Act" to make it illegal to use bots to shop online and also outlaw reselling items purchased by bots. "Lawmakers label them 'Grinch' bots because, during the holiday season, resellers use them to buy inventory of highly coveted toys that can be resold at highly inflated prices," reports CNET. "Often times, these bots are so quick that they can purchase entire stocks of items before people can even add them to their carts." From the report: Sens. Tom Udall, Richard Blumenthal and Chuck Schumer along with Rep. Paul Tonko made the announcement on Black Friday. While the proposed legislation is focused around the holiday season and toys, the Grinch Bots act would apply to all retailers online. Toys aren't the only items that resellers online send swarms of bots to. Security researchers noted that bots designed to buy rare sneakers are a persistent issue, as developers will create AI to buy shoes from companies like Nike and Adidas as quickly as possible. The proposed bill leaves it open for security researchers to use bots on retailer websites to find vulnerabilities. "Middle class folks save up -- a little here, a little there -- working to afford the hottest gifts of the season for their kids but ever-changing technology and its challenges are making that very difficult. It's time we help restore an even playing field by blocking the bots," said Schumer, a Democrat from New York, in a statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The important data loss bug that interrupted the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, version 1809, may be fixed, but it turns out there are plenty of other weird problems with the release. As spotted by Paul Thurrott, the update also breaks the seek bar in Windows Media Player when playing "specific files." Microsoft does promise to fix the bug, but the timeframe is vaguely open-ended: it will be "in an upcoming release."

Also in the "how did that happen" category comes another bug: some Win32 programs can't be set as the default program for a given file type. So if you want certain files to always open in Notepad, for example, you're currently out of luck. A fix for this is promised by the end of the month. Setting default program associations is something that's been in Windows for 20-something years, so it's a little alarming that it should be broken. On top of this, there continue to be complaints that Windows 10 version 1809 doesn't work with iCloud, and machines with the iCloud client are currently blacklisted to prevent them from receiving the 1809 update. It's not immediately clear whose fault this one is -- it could be Microsoft's, but it's also possible that Apple is to blame.