An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: New York City is seeking to lead the assault on both climate change and the Trump administration with a plan to divest $5 billion from fossil fuels and sue the world's most powerful oil companies over their contribution to dangerous global warming. City officials have set a goal of divesting New York's $189 billion pension funds from fossil fuel companies within five years in what they say would be "among the most significant divestment efforts in the world to date." Currently, New York City's five pension funds have about $5 billion in fossil fuel investments. New York state has already announced it is exploring how to divest from fossil fuels. New York's Mayor, Bill de Blasio, said that the city is taking the five fossil fuel firms -- BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell -- to federal court due to their contribution to climate change.

Court documents state that New York has suffered from flooding and erosion due to climate change and because of looming future threats it is seeking to "shift the costs of protecting the city from climate change impacts back on to the companies that have done nearly all they could to create this existential threat." The court filing claims that just 100 fossil fuel producers are responsible for nearly two-thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution, with the five targeted companies the largest contributors. The case will also point to evidence that firms such as Exxon knew of the impact of climate change for decades, only to downplay and even deny this in public.

A major power outage brought a major portion of the Consumer Electronics Show in the Las Vegas Center to a standstill for nearly 2 hours today. The lights went out at around 11:13 a.m. PT, just as the second day of CES 2018 was ramping up, and didn't turn back on until around 12:34 p.m. PT. CNET reports: It came a day after more than an inch of rain fell in Las Vegas, which caused flash flooding in the desert city. (Wednesday's weather is clear and warm, and it's unclear if the power outage was at all related.) The first reports of the blackout came from the convention center's Central Hall, which houses the giant booths for show mainstays including Sony, Samsung, LG and Intel -- though Samsung's booth still had limited electricity thanks to its own private backup power. By noon, security guards were refusing entry to parts of the Convention Center. The website of Nevada Energy, the power provider, listed the cause of the problem as "customer-owned electrical equipment."

Microsoft is trying to fight back against perceptions that Cortana may be its next consumer-centric technology to face the chopping block. Yesterday, the company issued a press release touting recent wins for Cortana. Among these are the officially unveiled Johnson Controls' Cortana-powered thermostat (which goes on sale for $319 starting in March). ZDNet reports the "other recent Cortana device partners": Allwinner: This company has the Tech R16 Quad Core IoT solution (a reference design for device partners).
Synaptics: This ODM (original design manufacturer) and far-field voice processing vendor produces reference designs for consumer IoT, smart speakers, PC, and more that integrate Cortana.
TONLY: Another reference design vendor working with Microsoft on Cortana devices that make use of Skype.
Qualcomm: In addition to partnering with Microsoft on Windows-on-ARM "Always Connected" PCs, Qualcomm is building reference designs on its Smart Audio and Mesh Networking platforms that use Cortana. "In addition to our currently supported home automation partners, we are announcing new partnerships with Ecobee, Geeni, Honeywell Lyric, IFTTT, LIFX, TP-Link Kasa, and Honeywell Total Connect Comfort. Cortana currently supports lights, outlets, switches, and thermostats across all providers," the spokesperson said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Broadband consumer advocates have launched a "Mobile Only Challenge" to show U.S. regulators that cellular data should not be considered an adequate replacement for home Internet service. The awareness campaign comes as the Federal Communications Commission is considering a change to the standard it uses to judge whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion. While FCC Chairman Ajit Pai hasn't released his final plan yet, the FCC may soon declare that America's broadband deployment problem is solved as long as everyone has access to either fast home Internet or cellular Internet service with download speeds of at least 10Mbps. That would be a change from current FCC policy, which says that everyone should have access to both mobile data and fast home Internet services such as fiber or cable.

"The FCC wants to lower broadband standards," organizers of the Mobile Only Challenge say on the campaign's website. "Pledge to spend one day in January 2018 accessing the Internet only on your mobile device to tell them that's not OK." The Mobile Only Challenge was organized by Public Knowledge, Next Century Cities, New America's Open Technology Institute, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), and other groups. Participants are encouraged to share their experiences using the #MobileOnly hashtag.

A bug report submitted on Open Radar this week reveals a security vulnerability in the current version of macOS High Sierra that allows the App Store menu in System Preferences to be unlocked with any password. From a report: MacRumors is able to reproduce the issue on macOS High Sierra version 10.13.2, the latest public release of the operating system, on an administrator-level account by following these steps: 1. Click on System Preferences. 2. Click on App Store. 3. Click on the padlock icon to lock it if necessary. 4. Click on the padlock icon again. 5. Enter your username and any password. 6. Click Unlock.

As mentioned in the radar, System Preferences does not accept an incorrect password with a non-administrator account. We also weren't able to unlock any other System Preferences menus with an incorrect password. We're unable to reproduce the issue on the third or fourth betas of macOS High Sierra 10.13.3, suggesting Apple has fixed the security vulnerability in the upcoming release. However, the update currently remains in testing.

Astronomers appear to be closing in on the source of enigmatic radio pulses emanating from space that have become the subject of intense scientific speculation. From a new report: Previous candidates for the origin of the fleeting blasts of radiation -- known as fast radio bursts, or FRBs -- have included exploding stars, the reverberations of weird objects called cosmic strings or even distant beacons from interstellar alien spaceships. Now, new observations provide backing for a scenario involving a rapidly rotating neutron star cocooned by an ultra-powerful magnetic field. The explanation is more orthodox than some of the alternatives offered, but could point astronomers towards some of the most extreme magnetic environments in the known universe.

"Our preferred model is that they are coming from a neutron star ... that could be just 10 or 20 years old in an extreme magnetic environment," said Jason Hessels, a co-author of the new paper and astronomer at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy in the Dutch town of Dwingeloo. Fast radio bursts have perplexed astronomers ever since the signals were discovered in 2007 in earlier observation data from the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. About 30 of these objects have been discovered deep in space since the first was detected, all but one burping out a cataclysmic radio pulse exactly once and then disappearing into the night. Only one burster, known as FRB121102, after the date it was discovered (Nov. 2, 2012), has repeated itself, hundreds of times now.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The push behind the Always Connected PC vision has been ramping up in recent weeks, with manufacturers like HP, ASUS, and Lenovo all joining the fray with their own LTE PCs based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform. Now, Microsoft and Qualcomm have announced the first batch of mobile operators that will actively support Always Connected PCs around the world. These initial carriers will help to bring "easy and affordable connectivity plans to consumers on advanced LTE wireless networks," Microsoft and Qualcomm said in a press release. Throughout the first half of 2018 and beyond, the companies say, mobile operators in China, Italy, the UK, and the U.S. will officially support Always Connected PCs. Here's a look at the carriers you can expect to roll out support in each region: China -- China Telecom, Italy -- TIM (Telecom Italia), U.K. -- EE, U.S. -- Sprint, Verizon. In addition to supporting connected PCs on their LTE networks, you can expect each operator to stock Always Connected PCs in their retail store, Qualcomm and Microsoft say.

A Dallas business owner is accusing Yelp of hiding good reviews of his coffee shop after he refused to pay them for advertising. From a report on CBS Local: Bob Sinnott owns Toasted Coffee + Kitchen in Lower Greenville. He said after months of non-stop phone calls from Yelp, he claims his favorable rating dropped after he finally told the company he would not pay for advertising. "What I would compare it to, the mafia," said Sinnott. "You know, you do business with me or there's retaliation." Sinnott feels Yelp is hiding many of his 5-star reviews in the "not recommended" section because he chose not to pay for Yelp services. "The sales pitch is, pay us a monthly fee and we'll your help page," said Sinnott. He claims there were constant phone calls and emails from Yelp pitching the company's services. "It became what I would call borderline harassment," said Sinnott. After posting on Facebook about his experience, Sinnott said his rating went from a 4-star to a 3.5-star rating. Google rates Toasted at 4.1 and Facebook has the business at a 4.6 rating.

A group of crytopgraphers from Germany's Ruhr University Bochum have uncovered flaws in WhatsApp's security that compromise the instant messaging service's end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, has over one billion active users. In a paper published last week, "More is Less: On the End-to-End Security of Group Chats in Signal, WhatsApp, and Threema," anyone who controls WhatsApp's servers, including company employees, can covertly add members to any group -- a claim that might not bode well with privacy enthusiasts. From the paper: The described weaknesses enable attacker A, who controls the WhatsApp server or can break the transport layer security, to take full control over a group. Entering the group however leaves traces since this operation is listed in the graphical user interface. The WhatsApp server can therefore use the fact that it can stealthily reorder and drop messages in the group. Thereby it can cache sent messages to the group, read their content first and decide in which order they are delivered to the members. Additionally the WhatsApp server can forward these messages to the members individually such that a subtly chosen combination of messages can help it to cover the traces. Further reading: Wired.

An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 users who updated to receive the Meltdown and Spectre patches are reporting they are unable to boot their systems and have been forced to roll back to an earlier Linux kernel image. The issues were reported by a large number of users on the Ubuntu forums and Ubuntu's Launchpad bug tracker. Only Ubuntu users running the Xenial 16.04 series appear to be affected.

All users who reported issues said they were unable to boot after upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 with kernel image 4.4.0-108. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu OS, deployed Linux kernel image 4.4.0-108 as part of a security update for Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 users, yesterday, on January 9. According to Ubuntu Security Notice USN-3522-1 and an Ubuntu Wiki page, this was the update that delivered the Meltdown and Spectre patches.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A panel of federal judges struck down North Carolina's congressional map on Tuesday, condemning it as unconstitutional because Republicans had drawn the map seeking a political advantage (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). The ruling was the first time that a federal court had blocked a congressional map because of a partisan gerrymander, and it instantly endangered Republican seats in the coming elections. Judge James A. Wynn Jr., in a biting 191-page opinion, said that Republicans in North Carolina's Legislature had been "motivated by invidious partisan intent" as they carried out their obligation in 2016 to divide the state into 13 congressional districts, 10 of which are held by Republicans. The result, Judge Wynn wrote, violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The ruling and its chief demand -- that the Republican-dominated Legislature create a new landscape of congressional districts by Jan. 24 -- infused new turmoil into the political chaos that has in recent years enveloped North Carolina. President Trump carried North Carolina in 2016, but the state elected a Democrat as its governor on the same day and in 2008 supported President Barack Obama.

SourceForge on Tuesday introduced an overhaul of its website to give it a new look and add new features. Among the most notable additions, the popular repository, which hosts over 430,000 projects and 3.7 million registered developers, said it was creating a GitHub Importer tool which would enable developers to import their GitHub project to SourceForge and also sync their GitHub project file releases on SourceForce so they "can take advantage of the strengths of both platforms." In a blog post, the team wrote:We believe the open source community is always better served when there are multiple options for open source projects to live, and these options are not mutually exclusive. More improvements and new features are on track to be released throughout the year, the team wrote.

Nvidia has became the latest chipmaker to release software patches for the Spectre microchip security threat, indicating that the chipset flaw was affecting graphic processors as well as CPUs. From a report: To that end, NVIDIA has detailed how its GPUs are affected by the speculative execution attacks and has started releasing updated drivers that tackle the issue. All its GeForce, Quadro, NVS, Tesla and GRID chips appear to be safe from Meltdown (aka variant 3 of the attacks), but are definitely susceptible to at least one version of Spectre (variant 1) and "potentially affected" by the other (variant 2). The new software mitigates the first Spectre flaw, but NVIDIA is promising future mitigations as well as eventual updates to address the second. Most of the updates are available now, although Tesla and GRID users will have to wait until late January.

The chairman of a U.S. Senate committee overseeing business issues asked Apple to answer questions about its disclosure that it slowed older iPhones with flagging batteries, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing a letter. From the report: The California-based company apologized over the issue on Dec. 28, cut battery replacement costs and said it will change its software to show users whether their phone battery is good. Senator John Thune, a Republican who chairs the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said in a Jan. 9 letter to Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook that "the large volume of consumer criticism leveled against the company in light of its admission suggests that there should have been better transparency."

Taiwan's national police agency said 54 of the flash drives it gave out at an event highlighting a government's cybercrime crackdown contained malware. From a report: The virus, which can steal personal data and has been linked to fraud, was added inadvertently, it said. The Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) apologised for the error and blamed the mishap on a third-party contractor. It said 20 of the drives had been recovered. Around 250 flash drives were given out at the expo, which was hosted by Taiwan's Presidential Office from 11-15 December and aimed to highlight the government's determination to crack down on cybercrime.