An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vox: Facebook's fake news problems extend far beyond Russian trolls interfering in U.S. elections. Overseas, false stories have turned into tools of political warfare -- most notably in Myanmar, where government forces have carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, the country's Muslim minority group. In an interview with Vox's Ezra Klein, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed Facebook's role in fueling and inciting anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya sentiment. "The Myanmar issues have, I think, gotten a lot of focus inside the company," Zuckerberg said. "And they're real issues and we take this really seriously."

He recalled one incident where Facebook detected that people were trying to spread "sensational messages" through Facebook Messenger to incite violence on both sides of the conflict. He acknowledged that in such instances, it's clear that people are using Facebook "to incite real-world harm." But in this case, at least, the messages were detected and stopped from going through. "This is certainly something that we're paying a lot of attention to," Zuckerberg continued. "It's a real issue, and we want to make sure that all of the tools that we're bringing to bear on eliminating hate speech, inciting violence, and basically protecting the integrity of civil discussions that we're doing in places like Myanmar, as well as places like the U.S. that do get a disproportionate amount of the attention."

The Tor Project has announced that it's winding down its privacy-focused Tor Messenger chat program, nearly three years after its beta debut. From a report: Tor, an acronym of "The Onion Router," is better known for its privacy-focused browser that directs traffic through a volunteer-run network of relays to prevent any untoward eavesdropping on users' online activity. Indeed, the Tor Browser is often used by activists, whistleblowers, and anyone wishing to remain anonymous, and major companies -- such as Facebook -- have embraced Tor over the years.

The people behind the anonymity network started working on Tor Messenger in early 2014, launched it in alpha a year later, before rolling out the beta version in October 2015, where it has remained since -- though there have been more than 10 separate beta releases. [...] In terms of why Tor Messenger is being sunsetted, well, there are a number of reasons. Arguably the most important of the reasons is that uptake wasn't quite where Tor wanted it to be at to justify working on it, while it also realized that it wasn't the perfect private messaging client due to its metadata problem.

Some cybersecurity experts and regular users were surprised to learn about a Chrome tool that scans Windows computers for malware. But there's no reason to freak out about it. From a report: Last year, Google announced some upgrades to Chrome, by far the world's most used browser -- and the one security pros often recommend. The company promised to make internet surfing on Windows computers even "cleaner" and "safer" adding what The Verge called "basic antivirus features." What Google did was improve something called Chrome Cleanup Tool for Windows users, using software from cybersecurity and antivirus company ESET.

[...] Last week, Kelly Shortridge, who works at cybersecurity startup SecurityScorecard, noticed that Chrome was scanning files in the Documents folder of her Windows computer. "In the current climate, it really shocked me that Google would so quietly roll out this feature without publicizing more detailed supporting documentation -- even just to preemptively ease speculation," Shortridge told me in an online chat. "Their intentions are clearly security-minded, but the lack of explicit consent and transparency seems to violate their own criteria of 'user-friendly software' that informs the policy for Chrome Cleanup [Tool]." Her tweet got a lot of attention and caused other people in the infosec community -- as well as average users such as me -- to scratch their heads.

OpenBSD announced on Monday that v6.3 update, which was slated to be released on April 15, is ready for download. From the announcement post: This is our 44th release. We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of more than twenty years with only two remote holes in the default install. As in our previous releases, 6.3 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system. You can read about the changes and improvements here.

An anonymous reader writes: Google announced that effective today, the Chrome Web Store review staff would stop accepting new extensions on the Web Store that perform cryptocurrency mining. Existing Chrome extensions that perform cryptocurrency mining will be delisted sometime in late June. The decision came after Google saw a rise in extensions that performed hidden in-browser mining (cryptojacking) behind the users' backs, in background processes.

Even if Google has not said it outright, the company has taken this step to protect Chrome's image. Cryptojacking scripts have a huge impact on a computer's responsiveness, and when most users investigate, they see Chrome's processes hogging CPU resources. Very few of these users will be able to track the spike in CPU usage back to an extension. Google has worked incredibly hard to create the image that Chrome is today's fastest browser, and the company isn't going to stand by and watch some extension developers ruin Chrome's brand so that some devs can make a few Monero on the side.

Apple is planning to use homegrown custom-built processors in its Mac line of computers, ditching Intel, the processors by which powers Apple's current line of computers, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The company could make the switch to its own chips as early as 2020, the report said. From the report: The initiative, code named Kalamata, is still in the early developmental stages, but comes as part of a larger strategy to make all of Apple's devices -- including Macs, iPhones, and iPads -- work more similarly and seamlessly together, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The project, which executives have approved, will likely result in a multi-step transition.

The shift would be a blow to Intel, whose partnership helped revive Apple's Mac success and linked the chipmaker to one of the leading brands in electronics. Apple provides Intel with about 5 percent of its annual revenue, according to Bloomberg supply chain analysis. Intel shares dropped as much as 9.2 percent, the biggest intraday drop in more than two years, on the news.

Tekla Perry writes: Are graphics processors a law unto themselves? Nvidia's Jensen Huang says a 25-times speedup over five years is evidence that they are. He calls this the 'supercharged law,' and says it's time to start counting advances on multiple fronts, including architecture, interconnects, memory technology, and algorithms, not just circuits on a chip.

A large crack, stretching several miles, made a sudden appearance recently in south-western Kenya. The tear emerged after heavy rains caused havoc in the nation last month, which also saw neighborhood get flooded and major highways closing off. The downpour also exposed a fault line that geologists now say is evidence that the African continent will split into two over the next tens of millions of years. From a report: The Earth is an ever-changing planet, even though in some respects change might be almost unnoticeable to us. Plate tectonics is a good example of this. But every now and again something dramatic happens and leads to renewed questions about the African continent splitting in two. The Earth's lithosphere (formed by the crust and the upper part of the mantle) is broken up into a number of tectonic plates. These plates are not static, but move relative to each other at varying speeds, "gliding" over a viscous asthenosphere.

[...] The East African Rift Valley stretches over 3,000km from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south, splitting the African plate into two unequal parts: the Somali and Nubian plates. Activity along the eastern branch of the rift valley, running along Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, became evident when the large crack suddenly appeared in south-western Kenya. When the lithosphere is subject to a horizontal extensional force it will stretch, becoming thinner. Eventually, it will rupture, leading to the formation of a rift valley. This process is accompanied by surface manifestations along the rift valley in the form of volcanism and seismic activity. Rifts are the initial stage of a continental break-up and, if successful, can lead to the formation of a new ocean basin.

Google on Monday said it was formally expanding its Rolling Study Halls program, or school buses equipped with WiFi, computers and on-bus educators to help rural students with work beyond school hours. From a report: Google today announced an expansion of its Rolling Study Halls initiative to over 16 additional school districts, giving "thousands" of students access to Wi-Fi and Chromebooks on their buses. Google has piloted the program in North Carolina and South Carolina over the last couple years, focusing its efforts on rural communities where some students have lengthy bus rides between home and the classroom each day.

Providing students with dependable Wi-Fi before and after school is a boon for those who might lack broadband internet at home, giving them two opportunities daily to complete assignments or study for exams while on the bus. Google contributes mobile Wi-Fi routers, data plans, and Chromebook devices.

The EU's long-promised digital media portability rules have taken effect as of April 1st, letting residents access Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other paid digital media services in other member countries as if they were still at home. From a report: The European Commission's 'digital single market strategy,' which last year claimed victory over mobile roaming charges, has now lead to it passing the 'portability regulation,' which will allow users around the EU to use region locked services more freely while travelling abroad. Under currently active rules, what content is available in a certain territory is based on the specific local rights that a provider has secured. The new rules allow for what Phil Sherrell, head of international media, entertainment and sport for international law firm Bird and Bird, calls "copyright fiction," allowing the normal rules to be bent temporarily while a user is travelling.

The regulation was originally passed in June 2017, but the nine-month period given to rights holders and service providers to prepare is about to expire, and thereby making the rules enforceable. From today, content providers, whether their products are videos, music, games, live sport or e-books, will use their subscribers' details to validate their home country, and let them access all the usual content and services available in that location all around the Union.

To mark Red Hat's 25th anniversary, TechCrunch spoke with the company's CEO Jim Whitehurst to talk about the past, present and future of the company, and open-source software in general. An excerpt: "Ten years ago, open source at the time was really focused on offering viable alternatives to traditional software," he told me. "We were selling layers of technology to replace existing technology. [...] At the time, it was open source showing that we can build open-source tech at lower cost. The value proposition was that it was cheaper." At the time, he argues, the market was about replacing Windows with Linux or IBM's WebSphere with JBoss. And that defined Red Hat's role in the ecosystem, too, which was less about technological information than about packaging. "For Red Hat, we started off taking these open-source projects and making them usable for traditional enterprises," said Whitehurst.

About five or six ago, something changed, though. Large corporations, including Google and Facebook, started open sourcing their own projects because they didn't look at some of the infrastructure technologies they opened up as competitive advantages. Instead, having them out in the open allowed them to profit from the ecosystems that formed around that. "The biggest part is it's not just Google and Facebook finding religion," said Whitehurst. "The social tech around open source made it easy to make projects happen. Companies got credit for that." He also noted that developers now look at their open-source contributions as part of their resume. With an increasingly mobile workforce that regularly moves between jobs, companies that want to compete for talent are almost forced to open source at least some of the technologies that don't give them a competitive advantage.
In October, Whitehurst also answered questions from Slashdot readers.

A week after Apple CEO Cook said "some well-crafted regulation is necessary " in light of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal and that Apple was better off than Facebook because it doesn't sell user data to advertisers, Facebook's CEO has struck back. In an interview published on Monday, he said: "You know, I find that argument, that if you're not paying that somehow we can't care about you, to be extremely glib. And not at all aligned with the truth. The reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, then there are a lot of people who can't afford to pay. And therefore, as with a lot of media, having an advertising-supported model is the only rational model that can support building this service to reach people . . . I don't at all think that means that we don't care about people. To the contrary, I think it's important that we don't all get Stockholm syndrome, and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you. Because that sounds ridiculous to me."

Christine Peterson is a long-time futurist who co-founded the nanotech advocacy group the Foresight Institute in 1986. One of her favorite tasks has been contacting the winners of the institute's annual Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, but she also coined the term "Open Source software" for that famous promotion strategy meeting in 1998. Now Christine's agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers. We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.

Interestingly, Christine was also on the Editorial Advisory Board of NASA's Nanotech Briefs, and on the state of California's nanotechnology task force. Her tech talks at conferences include "Life Extension for Geeks" at Gnomedex and "Preparing for Bizarreness: Open Source Physical Security" at the 2007 Singularity Summit. Another talk argues that the nanotech revolution will be like the information revolution, except that "Instead of with bits, we should do it with atoms," allowing molecule-sized machines that can kill cancer and repair DNA. Her most recent publication is "Cyber, Nano, and AGI RIsks: Decentralized Approaches to Reducing Risks." Christine graduated from MIT with a bachelors in chemistry.

So leave your best questions in the comments. (Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment.) We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.