A new report from The Wall Street Journal says the FBI is reviewing Tesla's Model 3 production numbers as part of an ongoing criminal probe into whether the company misled investors. "Federal agents are reviewing Tesla's stated Model 3 numbers dating back to early 2017, the Journal reports, citing unnamed sources," CNBC reports. From the report: Tesla had previously said it provided documents to the Department of Justice regarding CEO Elon Musk's controversial take-private tweet -- a blunder that ultimately cost Tesla and Musk a combined $40 million in fraud settlement fees. Now Tesla says it also provided information to the Department of Justice regarding Musk's public statements regarding production numbers of its Model 3 sedan. Tesla says the company has not received "a subpoena, a request for testimony, or any other formal process," but the Journal reported Friday that former Tesla employees have received subpoenas and requests for testimony.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: California has agreed to delay enforcement of its net neutrality law until after litigation that will determine whether states can implement their own net neutrality rules. California's net neutrality law was slated to take effect on January 1, 2019. But the Trump administration's Department of Justice and broadband industry sued to block the law and were seeking a preliminary injunction that would halt enforcement until litigation is over.

The DOJ and broadband industry had a good chance of winning a preliminary injunction because the Federal Communications Commission had declared that all state net neutrality rules are preempted. As the DOJ argued, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California must presume that the FCC preemption of state laws is valid since that preemption has not been overturned by any court. In a U.S. District Court filing today, California agreed to take no action to enforce the state net neutrality law until after the U.S. Court of Appeals case is decided and all appeals have been exhausted.

Microsoft said Friday it will not pull out of the competition for a $10 billion cloud contract for the Department of Defense, despite growing concerns about private companies selling new technologies to the federal government. From a report: The Redmond, Wash., company defended its position in a blog post Friday, claiming that technologists should be involved in government adoption of new innovations to ensure they are not misused. Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in the post that "to withdraw from this market is to reduce our opportunity to engage in the public debate about how new technologies can best be used in a responsible way." He decided to share publicly sentiments that he and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed at a monthly Q&A with employees Thursday. "We want the people of this country and especially the people who serve this country to know that we at Microsoft have their back," Smith wrote. "They will have access to the best technology that we create." Smith's defense comes days after an unspecified number of Microsoft employees urged the company to not bid on the Project JEDI.

Further reading: Oracle Trying Hard To Make Sure Pentagon Knows Amazon Isn't the Only Cloud Around; Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10 Billion Cloud Competition; Jeff Bezos Defends Big Tech Working with Department of Defense.

Readers share a column: Apple is no longer the king of the smartphone camera, but that's just a small component of a company in (highly profitable) stagnation. It wasn't that long ago that anyone who cared about taking great photos on their phone was destined to buy an iPhone (whether they wanted it or not) just by sheer brilliance of its miniaturized camera tech. But something happened over the last 18 months that's changed the dynamic for consumers in the market: Samsung and especially Google have started producing handsets that equal or surpass Apple's devices with their picture-taking quality.

[...] But Google is not Facebook, and while I give up some of my data to the company, what I get in return has sizable value -- apps I use for hours every day, predictive services that actually work, photo processing that means I'm less likely to miss an important moment. To be clear: the stuff Google and Amazon are doing right now isn't just cool and doesn't solely serve their corporate interests -- it matters in very real ways to consumers, with touchpoints they encounter every day where Apple can't even get a word in edgewise.

[...] Coming in second in the camera space alone might not be that big of an issue, but Apple has also had significant problems with its hardware recently -- not just with quality control, but in pure design terms as well (who could have predicted that in 2018 people would be touting Microsoft as the industry leader in design?). Siri continues to be a running joke among most people I know -- tech enthusiasts and average users alike. Apple's iCloud efforts have amounted to little more than a "hard disk in the sky" (a famous Jobsian turn of phrase). And is it the best experience for consumers to be forced into Apple Mail, Apple Maps, iTunes, Apple Music, and Apple Photos at every turn? Can you honestly say they're the best at what they do?

Scientists in Chicago are trying to create the embryo of the first quantum internet. If they succeed, the researchers will produce one, 30-mile piece of a far more secure communications system with the power of fast quantum computing. From a report: The key was the realization of an unused, 30-mile-long fiber optic link connecting three Chicago-area research institutions -- Argonne National Lab, Fermi Lab and the University of Chicago. This led to the idea to combine efforts and use the link for what they call the Chicago Quantum Exchange. David Awschalom, an Argonne scientist and University of Chicago professor who is the project's principal investigator, tells Axios that the concept is difficult to grasp, even for experts. MIT Technology Review elaborates: The QKD approach used by Quantum Xchange works by sending an encoded message in classical bits while the keys to decode it are sent in the form of quantum bits, or qubits. These are typically photons, which travel easily along fiber-optic cables. The beauty of this approach is that any attempt to snoop on a qubit immediately destroys its delicate quantum state, wiping out the information it carries and leaving a telltale sign of an intrusion. The initial leg of the network, linking New York City to New Jersey, will allow banks and other businesses to ship information between offices in Manhattan and data centers and other locations outside the city.

However, sending quantum keys over long distances requires "trusted nodes," which are similar to repeaters that boost signals in a standard data cable. Quantum Xchange says it will have 13 of these along its full network. At nodes, keys are decrypted into classical bits and then returned to a quantum state for onward transmission. In theory, a hacker could steal them while they are briefly vulnerable.

Both Amazon and Apple are taking retributive measures against Bloomberg, which in a report earlier this month alleged that some motherboards used by these companies were hacked by China. From a report: Amazon pulled its fourth quarter advertisements on Bloomberg's website, a move some within the media giant think is retribution for its controversial story alleging that Chinese spies hacked into the online retailer's servers. According to a source in position to know, Amazon's digital media buyer, Initiative, informed Bloomberg's sales staff on October 16 that it would cancel its ad buys for the fourth quarter due to budget cuts. Internally, the source said, the staff received that decision, made only eight days after a previous communication with Initiative confirming that the ads would run, as a direct response to Amazon's displeasure over the October 4 story. (Amazon announced Thursday that its marketing expenses for Q3 2018 were 3.3 billion dollars, up more than 800 million dollars from the year before.) [...] According to multiple sources, Bloomberg was not invited to Apple's fall product event next week in Brooklyn. Further reading: In an Unprecedented Move, Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls For Bloomberg To Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story.

tedlistens writes: As law enforcement investigates possible mail bombs sent to prominent Democratic Party figures and liberal activists, the tools available at their disposal include digital images and delivery metadata commonly associated with mail sent in the United States. The U.S. Postal Service regularly photographs the front and back of every piece of U.S. mail, or about 150 billion parcels, envelopes, and postcards every year. A longstanding practice known as the "mail cover" program enables law enforcement to obtain address information and images of the outsides of mail as part of an investigation without the need for a warrant through the Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Postal Service's policing arm.

According to a report from CBS News, authorities are currently using "data analytics" to spot similar packages to those identified as containing bombs. Images of packages shared with the press show a common return address, using the misspelled name of Representative and former Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The Postal Inspection Service doesn't generally comment on its investigative techniques. As part of the mail cover program, mail is routinely digitally photographed as part of the sorting process and even available for recipients to digitally preview in some areas. Apart from threats like bombs, the department says its main focus is on mail theft, fraud, and narcotics cases.

Intel is staying quiet on when the company expects its shortage of entry-level CPUs to end as it prioritizes production of Core and Xeon processors to meet growing demand in the PC and server markets. From a report: The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company provided more details on its plan to improve processor supply in its third-quarter earnings call on Thursday, when the company reported a continuing resurgence in its PC business and strong continued growth in its data-centric businesses. When an analyst asked Intel interim CEO Bob Swan when he expected the supply constraints to be over, Swan did not provide a timeline in his response. But he answered other parts of the analyst's questions about the company's efforts to improve supply. "We were caught off guard a little bit this year by the explosive growth well ahead of what our expectations were back at the beginning of the year, and that growth came from all different segments of the business," he said. "It put us in the unfortunate situation of constraining some of the demand signals that we were seeing from the market and our customer base."

President Donald Trump has accused Twitter of targeting his followers for removal from the social media platform, amid complaints by conservatives that social media companies have been discriminating against right-wing voices. From a report: "Twitter has removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join -- they have stifled growth to a point where it is obvious to all," Trump said in a tweet Friday. "A few weeks ago it was a Rocket Ship, now it is a Blimp! Total Bias?" Trump and some other Republicans have complained that Facebook, Alphabet's Google and Twitter have censored or suppressed conservative voices. Democrats have called that a diversion from concern over Russia's use of social-media platforms to influence the 2016 presidential election and over the proliferation of offensive content. In his opening remarks during a meeting with state attorneys general in September, Attorney General Jeff Sessions raised concerns that social media companies have a political agenda and have the power to manipulate public opinion, according to Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh.

Corin Faife, writing for BreakerMag: The level of deception used was minimal: we created a fake email account, and claimed to be representing a PR company. There was no fake website or domain associated; it was simply a Gmail address with a profile picture found by image searching "Russian actor." Next we compiled a list of blockchain media sites. This was by no means exhaustive, but to have a sense of the scale of the problem, we needed numbers. All in all, we reached out to 28 sites, and received a yes/no reply from 22 by the time of publication, with two inconclusive. [...] Of the 22 outlets who replied conclusively, 12 of them -- more than half the total -- were willing to publish paid content without disclosing it as such.

An anonymous reader shares a report:In a landmark study, 20 top US corporate lawyers with decades of experience in corporate law and contract review were pitted against an AI. Their task was to spot issues in five Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), which are a contractual basis for most business deals. The study, carried out with leading legal academics and experts, saw the LawGeex AI achieve an average 94% accuracy rate, higher than the lawyers who achieved an average rate of 85%. It took the lawyers an average of 92 minutes to complete the NDA issue spotting, compared to 26 seconds for the LawGeex AI. The longest time taken by a lawyer to complete the test was 156 minutes, and the shortest time was 51 minutes.

China's foreign ministry has some suggestions for the Trump administration if it is worried about foreign eavesdropping on the U.S. president's iPhones: use a Huawei handset instead. Or just cut all forms of modern communication with the outside world. From a report: The riposte came after the New York Times reported that American intelligence reports indicated that Chinese and Russian spies often listen in on President Donald Trump when he uses his Apple cellphones to chat with old friends. Aides have repeatedly told him that his cellphone calls are not secure, but although the president has been persuaded to use his secure White House landline more often, he has refused to give up the phones, the Times said. Trump called the Times report incorrect on Thursday, and dismissed it as "long and boring." "I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong!" Trump wrote on Twitter. In a later tweet, he said, "I rarely use a cellphone, & when I do it's government authorized. I like Hard Lines. Just more made up Fake News!"

Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) has given the cryptocurrency industry self-regulatory status, permitting the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association to police and sanction exchanges for any violations. From a report: The government has been reviewing its approach toward an industry that has been hit twice by large-scale thefts. The FSA approval gives the industry association rights to set rules to safeguard customer assets, prevent money laundering, and give operational guidelines. The association will also have to police compliance. "It's a very fast moving industry. It's better for experts to make rules in a timely manner than bureaucrats do," a senior FSA official said in a briefing, declining to be named. Similar officially sanctioned bodies exist in industries such as securities brokerages.

Zorro shares a report from Entertainment Weekly: The first-ever official Star Trek comedy series has been ordered. CBS All Access has greenlit an animated series from Emmy-winner Mike McMahan, a writer on Adult Swim's sensation Rick and Morty The half-hour series is titled Star Trek: Lower Decks and will tackle the Federation from a comedic perspective, focusing "on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships." Fans will recognize the Lower Decks title as referencing the name of one of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

In a 369-page report, the nation's leading scientific body (consisting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine) is urging the federal government to begin a research program focused on developing technologies that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to help slow climate change. It is now believed that in order to avoid significant further warming of the planet, big chunks of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may need to be removed. The New York Times reports: The panel's members conceded that the Trump administration may not find the climate change argument all that compelling, since the president has disavowed the Paris Agreement. But, Dr. Pacala said, it's quite likely that other countries will be interested in carbon removal. The United States could take a leading role in developing technologies that could one day be worth many billions of dollars.

Right now, there are plenty of ideas for carbon removal kicking around. Countries could plant more trees that pull carbon dioxide out of the air and lock it in their wood. Farmers could adopt techniques, such as no-till agriculture, that would keep more carbon trapped in the soil. A few companies are building "direct air capture" plants that use chemical agents to scrub trace amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, allowing them to sell the gas to industrial customers or bury it underground. But, the National Academies panel warned, many of these methods are still unproven or face serious limitations. There's only so much land available to plant new trees. Scientists are still unsure how much carbon can realistically be stored in agricultural soils. And direct air capture plants are still too expensive for mass deployment. One solution that the National Academies panel recommended was for the United States to set up programs to start testing and deploying carbon removal methods that look ready to go, such as negative emissions biomass plants, new forest management techniques or carbon farming programs.

"At the same time, federal agencies would need to fund research into early-stage carbon removal techniques, to explore whether they may one day be ready for widespread use," reports the NYT.