South Korea's former president, Lee Myung-bak, was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for bribery and embezzlement. He will also have to pay $11.5 million in fines. NPR reports: Lee is the second South Korean leader convicted this year of charges of corruption and the fourth former president to be arrested for corruption since the 1990s. Prior to entering politics, Lee had been an executive at Hyundai and campaigned on a promise to help South Korea's economy grow. Lee served as president of South Korea from 2008 until 2013. A court ruled Friday that before and during his presidency Lee accepted $5.4 million in bribes from Samsung, South Korea's largest conglomerate.

In exchange, Lee had granted a presidential pardon to Lee Kun-hee, Samsung's chairman, who had been convicted of embezzlement and tax evasion. The conviction had forced Lee Kun-hee to resign from Samsung in 2008; he returned to work at the company shortly after receiving the presidential pardon. The court also found that former president Lee disguised his ownership of a lucrative auto-parts maker under the names of his relatives and embezzled 24 billion Korean won from the company, according to The New York Times. Samsung later offered to pay legal fees for a court case involving the auto-parts company. Lee, who did not appear in court on Friday, denied the charges. "During the hearings, he shifted the blame to his aides, accusing them of committing the crimes for their own profit and conspiring against him," Judge Chung Kae-seon said on Friday, according to The Times.

Honda has reportedly walked away from a deal with Alphabet's Waymo to jointly develop autonomous vehicles earlier this year. Instead, Honda bought into Cruise, the self-driving car startup whose majority shareholder is General Motors. Bloomberg reports on the possible reasons why the deal fell through: For one, Waymo wasn't willing to share the substantial technology it had already developed to run autonomous vehicles, and was seeking to cut a deal that would focus on Honda providing the cars, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named because the talks were private. Essentially, Waymo wanted to be the brains and have Honda be the brawn in the relationship.

One person familiar with the talks said that Waymo wanted Honda to supply electric vehicles -- an area where the automaker is just beginning to establish itself. All of Waymo's existing partnerships supply EVs or plug-in hybrids because its autonomous driving system needs more power than the puny 12-volt batteries in conventional cars. After starting talks with Honda in late 2016, Honda told Waymo it was working on an EV for the partnership that would compete with Tesla Inc.'s Model 3. But by December of last year, Waymo was concerned about progress toward that goal and Honda went shopping for battery packs to power the vehicle, the person said.

After it was revealed that Vizio was tracking customers' viewing habits and sharing that data with advertisers, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the company. Now, Ars Technica is reporting that "lawyers representing Vizio TV owners have asked a federal judge in Orange County, California to sign off on [the settlement] with the company for $17 million, for an affected class of 16 million people, who must opt-in to get any money." The company "also agrees to delete all data that it collected." From the report: Notice of the lawsuit will be shown directly on the Vizio Smart TVs, three separate times, as well as through paper mailings. When it's all said and done, new court filings submitted on Thursday say each of those 16 million people will get a payout of somewhere between $13 and $31. By contrast, their lawyers will collectively earn a maximum payout of $5.6 million in fees.

Eventually, the company agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission. However, this new settlement is related to an entirely separate lawsuit, one that was consolidated in federal court in southern California. This $17 million amount is more than Vizio made by licensing the data collected, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: Democrats in the House of Representatives are promising to push for federal regulation of tech companies if they retake the House in November. Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, has drafted an Internet Bill of Rights and shared it with influential tech journalist Kara Swisher. It includes liberties like the right to access and transport personal data collected about you, an opt-in framework for data collection, and net neutrality protections. Rep. Nancy Pelosi charged Khanna with drafting the principles, according to an essay by Swisher published in the New York Times.

The list includes the right to obtain, correct, or delete personal data "where context appropriate and with a fair process." That's not nearly as sweeping as the "right to be forgotten" included in Europe's landmark General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect earlier this year. The Bill of Rights would also require companies that collect personal data to notify users of breaches in "a timely manner" and mandate "reasonable business practices and accountability to protect your privacy." Swisher calls it "an admirable list" but is concerned that codifying the principles "will be like pushing back the ocean." Many big tech companies have business models built entirely on collecting as much user data as possible.

Instagram is testing a feature that would allow it to share your location data with Facebook, regardless of whether you're using the app or not. Researcher Jane Manchun Wong says the option, which is being tested as a setting you have to opt-in to, allows Facebook products to "build and use a history of precise locations" which the company says "helps you explore what's around you, get more relevant ads and helps improve Facebook." The Verge reports: In a statement to TechCrunch, a spokesperson from Facebook confirmed that there was no guarantee the feature would see a wide release. "We often work on ideas that may evolve over time or ultimately not be tested or released. Instagram does not currently store Location History; we'll keep people updated with any changes to our location settings in the future."

Wong has a history of correctly identifying features like this before they're officially announced. She has previously leaked Facebook's dating application, Instagram's updated two-factor authentication, and Instagram's school bio feature. Facebook is also reportedly testing a map view to see friend's locations, similar to what's already offered by Snapchat. Instagram's data sharing could provide additional data points to power this functionality, while providing Facebook with more data to better target its ads.

AmiMoJo shares a report from Nikkei Asian Review: Japan's first submarine powered by lithium-ion batteries was launched on Thursday. The [Soryu-class diesel-electric] submarine can reach speeds of roughly 20 knots and displaces 2,950 tons. It will be delivered to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force in March 2020. Batteries are recharged by the energy generated by Oryu's diesel engines. The vessel switches to batteries during operations and actual combat in order to silence the engines and become harder to detect. The lithium-ion batteries radically extend the sub's range and time it can spend underwater.

TechCrunch's security editor, Zack Whittaker, analyzes Bloomberg's recent report that China infiltrated Apple, Amazon and others via a tiny microchip inserted into servers at the data centers associated with these companies. With Apple and Amazon refuting Bloomberg's claims, Whittaker talks about the "murky world of national security reporting" and the difficulties of reporting stories of this magnitude with anonymous sources. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from his report: Today's bombshell Bloomberg story has the internet split: either the story is right, and reporters have uncovered one of the largest and jarring breaches of the U.S. tech industry by a foreign adversary or it's not, and a lot of people screwed up. Welcome to the murky world of national security reporting. I've covered cybersecurity and national security for about five years, most recently at CBS, where I reported exclusively on several stories -- including the U.S. government's covert efforts to force tech companies to hand over their source code in an effort to find vulnerabilities and conduct surveillance. And last year I revealed that the National Security Agency had its fifth data breach in as many years, and classified documents showed that a government data collection program was far wider than first thought and was collecting data on U.S. citizens. Even with this story, my gut is mixed.

Naturally, people are skeptical of this "spy chip" story. On one side you have Bloomberg's decades-long stellar reputation and reporting acumen, a thoroughly researched story citing more than a dozen sources -- some inside the government and out -- and presenting enough evidence to present a convincing case. On the other, the sources are anonymous -- likely because the information they shared wasn't theirs to share or it was classified, putting sources in risk of legal jeopardy. But that makes accountability difficult. No reporter wants to say "a source familiar with the matter" because it weakens the story. It's the reason reporters will tag names to spokespeople or officials so that it holds the powers accountable for their words. And, the denials from the companies themselves -- though transparently published in full by Bloomberg -- are not bulletproof in outright rejection of the story's claims. These statements go through legal counsel and are subject to government regulation. These statements become a counterbalance -- turning the story from an evidence-based report into a "he said, she said" situation. That puts the onus on the reader to judge Bloomberg's reporting. Reporters can publish the truth all they want, but ultimately it's down to the reader to believe it or not. Whittaker ends by saying "Bloomberg's delivery could have been better," and that they "missed an opportunity to be more open and transparent in how it came to the conclusions that it did."

"Journalism isn't proprietary," Whittaker writes. "It should be open to as many people as possible. If you're not transparent in how you report things, you lose readers' trust. That's where the story rests on shaky ground. Admittedly, as detailed and as well-sourced as the story is, you -- and I -- have to put a lot of trust and faith in Bloomberg and its reporters."

From a report: For the first time, an international team of researchers has used a quantum computer to create artificial life -- a simulation of living organisms that scientists can use to understand life at the level of whole populations all the way down to cellular interactions. With the quantum computer, individual living organisms represented at a microscopic level with superconducting qubits were made to "mate," interact with their environment, and "die" to model some of the major factors that influence evolution. The new research, published in Scientific Reports on Thursday, is a breakthrough that may eventually help answer the question of whether the origin of life can be explained by quantum mechanics, a theory of physics that describes the universe in terms of the interactions between subatomic particles. Modeling quantum artificial life is a new approach to one of the most vexing questions in science: How does life emerge from inert matter, such as the "primordial soup" of organic molecules that once existed on Earth?

New submitter Hrrrg writes: A number of years ago, I built a computer with an Asus LGA 1150 Z87-Pro motherboard. Since the discovery of the Spectre and Meltdown CPU flaws, I was hoping for a BIOS update to address them. However, it seems that there will be no BIOS update forthcoming for this 5 year old motherboard. I would prefer not to repeat my mistake with future builds. Can you recommend another manufacturer that is doing better?

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Anand Kalelkar started a new job at a large insurance company, colleagues flooded him with instant messages and emails and rushed to introduce themselves in the cafeteria. He soon learned his newfound popularity came with strings attached. Strings of code. Many of Mr. Kalelkar's co-workers had heard he was a wizard at Microsoft Excel and were seeking his help in taming unruly spreadsheets and pivot tables gone wrong.

[...] Excel buffs are looking to lower their profiles. Since its introduction in 1985 by Microsoft Corp., the spreadsheet program has grown to hundreds of millions of users world-wide. It has simplified countless office tasks once done by hand or by rudimentary computer programs, streamlining the work of anyone needing to balance a budget, draw a graph or crunch company earnings. Advanced users can perform such feats as tracking the expenditures of thousands of employees. At the same time, it has complicated the lives of the office Excel Guy or Gal, the virtuosos whose superior skills at writing formula leave them fighting an endless battle against the circular references, merged cells and mangled macros left behind by their less savvy peers.

"If someone tells you that they âjust have a few Excel sheets' that they want help with, run the other way," tweeted 32-year-old statistician Andrew Althouse. "Also, you may want to give them a fake phone number, possibly a fake name. It may be worth faking your own death, in extreme circumstances." The few Excel sheets in question, during one recent encounter, turned out to have 400 columns each, replete with mismatched terms and other coding no-nos, said Mr. Althouse, who works at the University of Pittsburgh. The project took weeks to straighten out.

AmiMoJo shares a report: Tencent Holdings, the world's top-grossing games publisher, will use facial recognition technology to detect minors amid tighter scrutiny by the Chinese government over concerns excessive video gaming is hurting public health. Tencent's blockbuster mobile title, Honour of Kings, will be the first to test the technology, with some 1,000 new users in Beijing and Shenzhen selected to verify their identities through camera checks, the company said in a statement. In mid-September, Tencent found that almost half of the 600 game-playing minors and their parents who took part in its survey doubted facial-recognition checks in games, according to the statement. Tencent said it hoped to see how to use facial recognition and unearth problems through the scheme.

In less than two years, anything that can connect to the internet will come with a unique password -- that is, if it's produced or sold in California. From a report: The "Information Privacy: Connected Devices" bill that comes into effect on January 1, 2020, effectively bans pre-installed and hard-coded default passwords. It only took the authorities about two weeks to approve the proposal made by the state senate. The new regulation mandates device manufacturers to either create a unique password for each device at the time of production or require the user to create one when they interact with the device for the first time. According to the bill, it applies to any connected device, which is defined as a "physical object that is capable of connecting to the Internet, directly or indirectly, and that is assigned an Internet Protocol address or Bluetooth address."

Firefox has joined Google's WebP party, another endorsement for the internet giant's effort to speed up the web with a better image format. From a report: Google revealed WebP eight years ago and since then has built it into its Chrome web browser, Android phone software and many of its online properties in an effort to put websites on a diet and cut network data usage. But Google had trouble encouraging rival browser makers to embrace it. Mozilla initially rejected WebP as not offering enough of an improvement over more widely used image formats, JPEG and PNG. It seriously evaluated WebP but chose to try to squeeze more out of JPEG. But now Mozilla -- like Microsoft with its Edge browser earlier this week -- has had a change of heart. "Mozilla is moving forward with implementing support for WebP," the nonprofit organization said. WebP will work in versions of Firefox based on its Gecko browser engine, Firefox for personal computers and Android but not for iOS.

At an event this month (you can find the video of it here), Davide Cavalca, a production engineer at Facebook, spoke about the growing adoption of systemd at the data centers of the company. From a report: Facebook continues making use of systemd's many features inside their data centers. Some of their highlights for systemd use in 2018 includes: Facebook's servers have been relying on systemd for about the past two years. Facebook is using CentOS 7 everywhere from hosts to containers. While relying on CentOS 7, Facebook backports a lot of packages including new systemd releases, Meson, other dependencies, and of course new Linux kernel releases. Facebook is working on "pystemd" as a Python (Cython) wrapper on top of SD-BUS.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Arabella. Lark & Roe. Mae. NuPro. Small Parts. You might not know it from their names, but these brands all belong to Amazon. Amazon's private label business is booming, on pace to generate $7.5 billion this year and $25 billion by 2022, according to estimates from investment firm SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. To accelerate that growth, the company is inviting manufacturers to create products exclusively for its collection of private brands. The "Amazon Accelerator Program" is hiring a senior product manager for private brands, CNBC reported. The job listing invites applicants to "invent and Think Big to take an idea from concept to reality for Amazon customers." Duties include managing and planning inventory, identifying business opportunities, and working across a wide swath of Amazon divisions, including consumables, Prime Pantry, Prime Fresh, Prime Now, and Amazon Go. Another job listing spotted by CNBC, for a private brands program leader, notes that the "Private Brands team is rapidly expanding and is looking for an exceptional product leader to grow the business." Brands created through the accelerator will be exclusive to Amazon, but not owned by it, the company said. Further reading: Amazon is Stuffing Its Search Results Pages With Ads.