During a search for the Brown shoogin suspect, a law enforcement press conference included a request for "Ring camera footage from residents and businesses near Brown University," according to local news reports.

But in the end it was Flock cameras according to an article in Gizmodo, after a Reddit poster described seeing "odd" behavior of someone who turned out to be the suspect: The original Reddit poster, identified only as John in the affidavit, contacted police the next day and came in for an interview. He told them about his odd encounter with the suspect, noting that he was acting suspiciously by not having appropriate cold-weather clothes on when he saw him in a bathroom at Brown University. That was two hours before the shooting. After spotting him in the bathroom wearing a mask, John actually started following the suspect in what he called a "game of cat and mouse...." Police detectives showed John two images obtained through Flock, the company that's built extensive surveillance infrastructure across the U.S. used by investigators, and he recognized the suspect's vehicle, replying, "Holy shit. That might be it," according to the affidavit. Police were able to track down the license plate of the rental car, which gave them a name, and within 24 hours, they had found Claudio Manuel Neves Valente dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where he reportedly rented a unit.
"We intend to continue using technology to make sure our law enforcement are empowered to do their jobs," Flock's safety CEO Garrett Langley wrote on X.com, pinning the post to the top of his feed.

Though ironically, hours before Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez credited Flock for helping to find the suspect, CNN was interviewing Flock's safety CEO to discuss "his response to recent privacy concerns surrounding Flock's technology." To Langley, the situation underscored the value and importance of Flock's technology, despite mounting privacy concerns that have prompted some jurisdictions to cancel contracts with the company... Langley told me on Thursday that he was motivated to start Flock to keep Americans safer. His goal is to deter crime by convincing would-be criminals they'll be caught... One of Flock's cameras had recently spotted [the suspect's] car, helping police pinpoint Valente's location. Flock turned on additional AI capabilities that were not part of Providence Police's contract with the company to assist in the hunt, a company spokesperson told CNN, including a feature that can identify the same vehicle based on its description even if its license plates have been changed.

The company has faced criticism from some privacy advocates and community groups who worry that its networks of cameras are collecting too much personal information from private citizens and could be misused. Both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have urged communities not to work with Flock. "State legislatures and local governments around the nation need to enact strong, meaningful protections of our privacy and way of life against this kind of AI surveillance machinery," ACLU Senior Policy Analyst Jay Stanley wrote in an August blog post. Flock also drew scrutiny in October when it announced a partnership with Amazon's Ring doorbell camera system... ["Local officers using Flock Safety's technology can now post a request directly in the Ring Neighbors app asking for help," explains Flock's blog post.]

Langley told me it was up to police to reassure communities that the cameras would be used responsibly... "If you don't trust law enforcement to do their job, that's actually what you're concerned about, and I'm not going to help people get over that." Langley added that Flock has built some guardrails into its technology, including audit trails that show when data was accessed. He pointed to a case in Georgia where that audit found a police chief using data from LPR cameras to stalk and harass people. The chief resigned and was arrested and charged in November...

More recently, the company rolled out a "drone as first responder" service — where law enforcement officers can dispatch a drone equipped with a camera, whose footage is similarly searchable via AI, to evaluate the scene of an emergency call before human officers arrive. Flock's drone systems completed 10,000 flights in the third quarter of 2025 alone, according to the company... I asked what he'd tell communities already worried about surveillance from LPRs who might be wary of camera-equipped drones also flying overhead. He said cities can set their own limitations on drone usage, such as only using drones to respond to 911 calls or positioning the drones' cameras on the horizon while flying until they reach the scene. He added that the drones fly at an elevation of 400 feet.

"The internet did transform work — but not the way 1998 thought..." argues the Wall Street Journal. "The internet slipped inside almost every job and rewired how work got done."

So while the number of single-task jobs like travel agent dropped, most jobs "are bundles of judgment, coordination and hands-on work," and instead the internet brought "the quiet transformation of nearly every job in the economy... Today, just 10% of workers make minimal use of the internet on the job — roles like butcher and carpet installer." [T]he bigger story has been additive. In 1998, few could conceive of social media — let alone 65,000 social-media managers — and 200,000 information-security analysts would have sounded absurd when data still lived on floppy disks... Marketing shifted from campaign bursts to always-on funnels and A/B testing. Clinics embedded e-prescribing and patient portals, reshaping front-office and clinical handoffs. The steps, owners and metrics shifted. Only then did the backbone scale: We went from server closets wedged next to the mop sink to data centers and cloud regions, from lone system administrators to fulfillment networks, cybersecurity and compliance.

That is where many unexpected jobs appeared. Networked machines and web-enabled software quietly transformed back offices as much as our on-screen lives. Similarly, as e-commerce took off, internet-enabled logistics rewired planning roles — logisticians, transportation and distribution managers — and unlocked a surge in last-mile work. The build-out didn't just hire coders; it hired coordinators, pickers, packers and drivers. It spawned hundreds of thousands of warehouse and delivery jobs — the largest pockets of internet-driven job growth, and yet few had them on their 1998 bingo card... Today, the share of workers in professional and managerial occupations has more than doubled since the dawn of the digital era.

So what does that tell us about AI? Our mental model often defaults to an industrial image — John Henry versus the steam drill — where jobs are one dominant task, and automation maps one-to-one: Automate the task, eliminate the job. The internet revealed a different reality: Modern roles are bundles. Technologies typically hit routine tasks first, then workflows, and only later reshape jobs, with second-order hiring around the backbone. That complexity is what made disruption slower and more subtle than anyone predicted. AI fits that pattern more than it breaks it... [LLMs] can draft briefs, summarize medical notes and answer queries. Those are tasks — important ones — but still parts of larger roles. They don't manage risk, hold accountability, reassure anxious clients or integrate messy context across teams. Expect a rebalanced division of labor: The technical layer gets faster and cheaper; the human layer shifts toward supervision, coordination, complex judgment, relationship work and exception handling.

What to expect from AI, then, is messy, uneven reshuffling in stages. Some roles will contract sharply — and those contractions will affect real people. But many occupations will be rewired in quieter ways. Productivity gains will unlock new demand and create work that didn't exist, alongside a build-out around data, safety, compliance and infrastructure.

AI is unprecedented; so was the internet. The real risk is timing: overestimating job losses, underestimating the long, quiet rewiring already under way, and overlooking the jobs created in the backbone. That was the internet's lesson. It's likely to be AI's as well.

Melinda French Gates announced today she is stepping down from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, three years after announcing her separation from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. With her departure as co-chair, the foundation will change its name to Gates Foundation and Bill Gates will be its sole chairperson, said CEO Mark Suzman. NBC News reports: In a statement posted on her Instagram account, she said that as part of her agreement to step down from the foundation, she will retain $12.5 billion that she plans to put toward her ongoing work supporting women and families. "This is not a decision I came to lightly," French Gates wrote. "I am immensely proud of the foundation that Bill and I built together and of the extraordinary work it is doing to address inequities around the world." In a separate statement, Bill Gates said, "I am sorry to see Melinda leave, but I am sure she will have a huge impact in her future philanthropic work."

Now worth $75.2 billion, the Gates Foundation has over the course of its three-decade lifespan made $77.6 billion worth of grant payments, making it one of the largest donor organizations in the world, with a focus on health and developmental goals. It is one of the largest contributors to the World Health Organization, and played a key role in efforts to address the Covid pandemic. "After a difficult few years watching women's rights rolled back in the U.S. and around the world, she wants to use this next chapter to focus specifically on altering that trajectory," Suzman said of French Gates.

"I want to reassure you that the millions of people our work serves and the thousands of partners we work alongside can continue to count on the foundation. The foundation today is stronger than it has ever been."

"I know we all wish Melinda the best in her next chapter," he added, noting that French Gates "will not be bringing any of the foundation's work with her when she leaves."

SonicSpike shares a report from Scientific American: A day after the American Astronomical Society (AAS) announced that there were no signs of unsafe eclipse glasses or other solar viewers on the market in early March, astronomer and science communicator Rick Fienberg received an alarming call. Fienberg is project manager of the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force, which is busy preparing for the total eclipse over North America on April 8. He's the creator of a list of vetted solar filters and viewers that will protect wearers' eyes as they watch the moon move in front of the sun. When a solar eclipse last crossed a major swath of the U.S. in 2017, Fienberg and his team spotted some counterfeit glasses entering the marketplace -- imitations that distributors claimed were manufactured by vetted companies. Testing at accredited labs indicated that many counterfeits were actually safe to use, however. This led the task force to describe such eclipse glasses as "misleading" but not "dangerous" in a March 11 statement meant to reassure the public.

But then Fienberg's phone rang. The caller was "a guy who had bought thousands of eclipse glasses from a distributor who had been on our list at one point," Fienberg says. "Those glasses were not safe. They were no darker than ordinary sunglasses." Legitimate eclipse glasses are at least 1,000 times darker than the darkest sunglasses you can buy. Fienberg contacted Cangnan County Qiwei Craft, a Chinese factory that he knew manufactured safe glasses and had -- in the past -- sold them to the distributor in question. But this time, Fienberg says, factory representatives told him they hadn't sold to that distributor in a long while. "That's when we switched from being concerned about only counterfeits to being concerned about actual fakes," Fienberg says. The AAS does not have a confident estimate of how many fake or counterfeit glasses are for sale out there. And though Fienberg doesn't think this is a widespread problem, the situation is an "iceberg kind of concern," he says, because there are likely more examples than the ones he knows about. While counterfeit glasses may still be safe to use, completely fake glasses could put wearers in serious danger. [...]

While lab tests are the best way to determine whether glasses meet the ISO standard, Fienberg says there is a three-part test people can do at home if they're concerned their eclipse viewers aren't up to the task. First, put your glasses on indoors and look around. The only things you should be able to see are very bright lights, such as a halogen bulb or a smartphone flashlight. Then, if the glasses pass the indoor test, bring them outside -- but don't look at the sun just yet. Look around: it should be too dark to see distant hills, trees or even the ground. If that second test is passed, keep the glasses on and quickly glance at the sun. You should comfortably see a bright, sharp-edged round disk. If your glasses pass all three tests, they are probably safe to wear. Still, Fienberg points out that it's best to use them for only a few seconds every minute or so during the eclipse; this cautious approach is how they're intended to be used. And if you don't trust your glasses for April's celestial event, you could try to find a reliable pair in the next two decades. "You only have to wait 20 years for another really good eclipse year in the [United] States," Fienberg says.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Ars Technica: Following the passage of California's repair bill that Apple supported, requiring seven years of parts, specialty tools, and repair manual availability, Apple announced Tuesday that it would back a similar bill on a federal level. It would also make its parts, tools, and repair documentation available to both non-affiliated repair shops and individual customers, "at fair and reasonable prices."

"We intend to honor California's new repair provisions across the United States," said Brian Naumann, Apple's vice president for service and operation management, at a White House event Tuesday...

"I think most OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] will realize they can save themselves a lot of trouble by making parts, tools, and other requirements of state laws already in NY, MN, CA, and CO available nationally," wrote Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of The Repair Association, to Ars... Gordon-Byrne noted that firms like HP, Google, Samsung, and Lenovo have pledged to comply with repair rules on a national level. The US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) communicated a similarly hopeful note in its response to Tuesday's event, noting that "Apple makes a lot of products, and its conduct definitely influences other manufacturers." At the same time, numerous obstacles to repair access remain in place through copyright law — "Which we hope will be high on an agenda in the IP subcommittee this session," Gordon-Byrne wrote.
Besides strong support from President Biden, there's also strong support from America's Federal Trade Commission, reports TechCrunch: FTC chair Lina Khan commented on the pushback many corporations have given such legislation. Device and automotive manufacturers have argued that putting such choice in the hands of consumers opens them up to additional security risks. "We hear some manufacturers defend repair restrictions, claiming that they're needed for safety or security reasons," said Khan. "The FTC has found that all too often these claims are backed by limited evidence. Accordingly, the FTC has committed itself to using all of our enforcement and policy tools to fight for people's right to repair their own products."
A cautionary note from Ars Technica: Elizabeth Chamberlain, director of sustainability for iFixit, a parts vendor and repair advocate, suggested that Apple's pledge to extend California's law on a national level is "a strategic move." "Apple likely hopes that they will be able to negotiate out the parts of the Minnesota bill they don't like," Chamberlain wrote in an email, pointing specifically to the "fair and reasonable" parts provisioning measure that could preclude Apple's tendency toward pairing parts to individual devices. "[I]t's vital to get bulletproof parts pairing prohibitions passed in other states in 2024," Chamberlain wrote. "Independent repair and refurbishment depend on parts harvesting."
The Washington Post reports that currently repair shop owners and parts vendors "have had to find ways to reassure their customers they haven't made a mistake by choosing an independent fix." If the digital identifier tied to a replacement part doesn't match the one the phone expects to see, you'll start seeing those warnings and issues. "Only Apple pairs parts in an intrusive way where you get these messages pop up," said Jonathan Strange, owner of two XiRepair gadget repair shops in Montgomery, Alabama. To ward off those unnerving messages and restore full functionality, repair technicians are required to go through a "system configuration" process that authenticates the part after making the fix. Some small operations, like Strange's XiRepair shops, can do that in-store because they've gone through a process to become a certified Apple Independent Repair Providers. But that process can't happen at all in shops that haven't gone through that certification, or if more affordable parts like third-party replacements were used.
The Post also shares this reaction from Aaron Perzanowski, a repair researcher and law professor at the University of Michigan.

"The fact that companies want to use technology to essentially undo the notion of interchangeable parts is something we ought to find deeply disturbing."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Askern Medical Practice, a general practitioner surgery based in Doncaster, UK, managed to muddle its Christmas holiday message to patients by texting them they'd been diagnosed with "aggressive lung cancer with metastases." The message went out to patients of the medical facility -- there are reportedly about 8,000 of them -- on December 23, 2022. It asked patients to fill out a DS1500 form, which is used to help terminal patients expedite access to benefits because they may not have time for the usual bureaucratic delay.

About an hour after thoroughly alarming recipients of the not-so-glad tidings, the medical facility reportedly apologized in a follow-up text message. "Please accept our sincere apologies for the previous text message sent," the message reads, as reported by the BBC. "This has been sent in error. Our message to you should have read, 'We wish you a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.' In case of emergency please contact NHS 111." On Tuesday, the surgery took its apology public via its Facebook page. The surgery characterized the errant text message as both an administrative error and a computer-related error, without clarifying just how the mistake occurred. "While no data was breached, we can confirm an admin staff error was made, for which we apologized immediately upon becoming aware," Askern Medical Practice said in its post. "We would like to once again apologize sincerely to all patients for the distress caused. We take patient communication, confidentiality and data protection very seriously."

"We also pride in looking after our patients," the medical facility's apology continued. "We would like to reassure all our patients that the text message was a mistake (it was an internal patient supportive task amongst admin staff to act upon) and not related to you as a patient in any way. This was an isolated computer-related error for which we are extremely regretful, and steps are being taken to prevent a reoccurrence."

According to Russian telegram channels, the former World Chess Champion, Antoly Karpov, was "rushed to the hospital with multiple head injuries in which he was placed in an induced coma," reports ChessBase. "Karpov was put on a ventilator now, and has been diagnosed with cerebral edema, fractures of the right parietal and right temporal bones, multiple head hematomas, and traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage." From the report: On a few things none of the reports still in circulation disagree: the 12th World Champion and current member of Duma, Anatoly Karpov, 71, was found on the ground outside of the Duma, and unresponsive. His blood alcohol levels were very elevated, and he was rushed to the hospital into intensive care. Some early reports claimed he was the victim of an assault and in induced coma. This was later reiterated by other outlets such as Marca from Spain.

The source of this, according to Tass, Andrei Kovalev, chairman of the All-Russian Movement of Entrepreneurs, announced in his Telegram channel that Karpov was in intensive care after an attack by unknown people and put into an artificial coma. However Karpov's assistant denied this and said he was fine, had no injuries and was in stable condition. Which begs the question, how fine can he be if there is a need to reassure others he is in 'stable condition'. Since Russian media is under very tight control by the Russian State, it is impossible to know where the truth really lies. Developing...

"When comparing Meta — formerly Facebook — and Microsoft's approaches to the metaverse, it's clear Microsoft has a much more grounded and realistic vision," argues an analyst at data analytics/consultancy company GlobalData: Meta is set to grab a large portion of the $51 billion revenues from VR that GlobalData expects will be generated by 2030. Facebook led the consumer VR headsets market in 2020 and registered 255 VR-related patents between 2016 and 2020. And, as Meta, the company also plans to launch an enterprise-grade headset in Q4 2021. However, VR hardware and software have not been widely adopted. This is attributable to several issues, including latency, nausea, high prices, privacy concerns, and a lack of compelling content. While technologies such as 5G, cloud services, and motion tracking should help to address latency and nausea issues, improving content and developing effective data privacy practices will be paramount for VR's success (more on data privacy in a moment). For these reasons VR is not yet ready to take on the task of the metaverse.

Microsoft seems to have understood better than Meta how people actually use technology. All you need to use Mesh — Microsoft's so-called gateway to the metaverse — is your current smartphone or laptop. No clunky headsets or expensive tech setups are needed. With this approach, Microsoft is keeping its focus on available capabilities and enterprise applications over Meta's vision of total lifestyle adoption. Microsoft Teams also currently has over 145 million daily active users, whereas the total cumulative installed base of VR headsets is less than 17 million. From these numbers alone, Mesh for Microsoft Teams has a possible user base of more than eight times the number of users Meta could hope to reach with its VR headsets.
Facebook's promises of protecting data's privacy in the metaverse "will not be enough to reassure most future users," the article argues.

"Microsoft, on the other hand, is a market leader in data privacy and, when ranked by the 10 themes that matter most to the social media industry, is in second place overall, according to GlobalData's Social Media Thematic Scorecard. Meta is ranked 21st overall out of 35 companies on the scorecard, and its activity with regards to data privacy will be highly detrimental to its future performance."

Besides new issues like hyper-personalized ads, the metaverse will still face the old problem of content moderation, the article suggests — only now spread across a massive scale. And the article ultimately argues that "The metaverse will suffer from the same issues that plague the current version of the internet unless the right actions are taken by those that end up with control..."

Microsoft's better position as a future leader in the metaverse "comes with responsibilities, and Microsoft needs to be prepared to face them...."

Apple CEO Tim Cook has warned employees about leaking company information. Cook's memo: Dear Team,

It was great to connect with you at the global employee meeting on Friday. There was much to celebrate, from our remarkable new product line-up to our values driven work around climate change, racial equity, and privacy. It was a good opportunity to reflect on our many accomplishments and to have a discussion about what's been on your mind.

I'm writing today because I've heard from so many of you were incredibly frustrated to see the contents of the meeting leak to reporters. This comes after a product launch in which most of the details of our announcements were also leaked to the press.

I want you to know that I share your frustration. These opportunities to connect as a team are really important. But they only work if we can trust that the content will stay within Apple. I want to reassure you that we are doing everything in our power to identify those who leaked. As you know, we do not tolerate disclosures of confidential information, whether it's product IP or the details of a confidential meeting. We know that the leakers constitute a small number of people. We also know that people who leak confidential information do not belong here.

As we look forward, I want to thank you for all you've done to make our products a reality and all you will do to get them into customers' hands. Yesterday we released iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and watchOS 8, and Friday marks the moment when we share some of our incredible new products with the world. There's nothing better than that. We'll continue to measure our contributions in the lives we change, the connections we foster, and the work we do to leave the world a better place.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GameSpot: Amazon [...] is now bricking high-end graphics cards with a beta for its MMO, New World, according to players. Amazon has now responded to downplay the incident but says it plans to implement a frame rate cap on the game's menus. According to users on Twitter and Reddit, New World has been frying extremely high-end graphics cards, namely Nvidia's RTX 3090. It's worth noting that while the RTX 3090 has an MSRP of $1,500, it's often selling for much more due to scarcity and scalpers, so players could easily be losing upwards of $2,000 if their card stops working.

Specifically, it seems that one model of the RTX 3090 is being consistently fried by New World. On Reddit, a lengthy thread of over 600 posts includes multiple users claiming that their EVGA 3090 graphics cards are now little more than expensive paperweights after playing the New World beta. The "red light of death," an indicator that something is disastrously wrong with your EVGA 3090, doesn't pop up consistently for players though. Some report their screen going black after a cutscene in the game while others have said that simply using the brightness calibration screen was enough to brick their card. Amazon Games says a patch is on the way to prevent further issues. "Hundreds of thousands of people played in the New World Closed Beta yesterday, with millions of total hours played. We've received a few reports of players using high-performance graphics cards experiencing hardware failure when playing New World," said Amazon Games in an official statement.

"New World makes standard DirectX calls as provided by the Windows API. We have seen no indication of widespread issues with 3090s, either in the beta or during our many months of alpha testing. The New World Closed Beta is safe to play. In order to further reassure players, we will implement a patch today that caps frames per second on our menu screen. We're grateful for the support New World is receiving from players around the world, and will keep listening to their feedback throughout Beta and beyond."

New World is currently set to launch for PC on August 31.

Apple said it's adjusting its approach to its AirTags sensors, changing the time they play an alert when separated from their owner, and also creating new ways to warn people an unexpected AirTag or Find My network-enabled device is nearby. From a report: The tech giant said Thursday it's begun sending out updates to its AirTags, changing the window of time they'll make noises when potentially being used to track another person. Initially, the Apple device would play in three days. Now it'll begin to play at a random time inside a window that lasts between 8 and 24 hours. To further reassure people about its AirTags, Apple said it's developing an app for Android devices that will help people "detect" an AirTag or Find My network-enabled device that may also be unsuspectedly "traveling" with them. Apple iPhones already have a similar alert system built into their devices. The Android app will be released later this year.

Amazon "seized and destroyed" over 2 million counterfeit products that sellers sent to Amazon warehouses in 2020 and "blocked more than 10 billion suspected bad listings before they were published in our store," the company said in its first "Brand Protection Report." Ars Technica reports: In 2020, "we seized and destroyed more than 2 million products sent to our fulfillment centers and that we detected as counterfeit before being sent to a customer," Amazon's report said. "In cases where counterfeit products are in our fulfillment centers, we separate the inventory and destroy those products so they are not resold elsewhere in the supply chain," the report also said. Third-party sellers can also ship products directly to consumers instead of using Amazon's shipping system. The 2 million fakes found in Amazon fulfillment centers would only account for counterfeit products from sellers using the "Fulfilled by Amazon" service.

The counterfeit problem got worse over the past year. "Throughout the pandemic, we've seen increased attempts by bad actors to commit fraud and offer counterfeit products," Amazon VP Dharmesh Mehta wrote in a blog post yesterday. Amazon's new report was meant to reassure legitimate sellers that their products won't be counterfeited. While counterfeits remain a problem for unsuspecting Amazon customers, the e-commerce giant said that "fewer than 0.01 percent of all products sold on Amazon received a counterfeit complaint from customers" in 2020. Of course, people may buy and use counterfeit products without ever realizing they are fake or without reporting it to Amazon, so that percentage may not capture the extent of the problem.

"From my time studying cults and helping followers escape them, I can reassure you that QAnon will disintegrate in the United States over time if effective measures are taken if and when Trump is defeated," writes prominent mental health counselor Steven Haasan: When cult adherents get confused, then ashamed, then realize they've been scammed, they get angry and exit. While some followers may continue to believe in the cult for some time — especially if they stay in an information silo — eventually contact with family and friends who care about them and others who have escaped from cults can and will help people come back to themselves. People are not permanently programmed, despite what some pundits and politicians may say. Like fashions and fads, movements end.

How do we dismantle a dangerous cult safely and turn this into yet another American fad as embarrassing as bell-bottoms, polyester and pet rocks? By dismantling the power of its mythology so people who have been pulled into it return to independent thinking. Fundamentally, QAnon is a mind virus, and we must bring the rate of transmission down. For starters, stop mocking QAnon and calling it a conspiracy theory; it is a psy-op, an intentional online cult movement aimed at recruiting and indoctrinating people into an all-or-nothing, us-vs.-them, good-vs.-evil frame. It is important to understand that QAnon believers think they are heroes and believe they are aligned with a righteous cause. We must take them seriously and build a rapport of respect. In other words, agree and amplify that human trafficking is bad and wrong. Then show legitimate groups fighting trafficking... Reclaim this issue and demonstrate that QAnon is talking about it but does nothing, while others are taking action to make a difference...

[W]hile QAnon promoters are currently being removed from the internet platforms they use to spread their propaganda and interact with adherents, as they should be, this approach will only temporarily disrupt and slow down new recruits, rather than help anyone exit. In fact, these moves can validate followers' beliefs that they are being persecuted, while a large percentage of cult members will simply be directed to alternative platforms... The key to helping these folks out is more respectful interaction — not cancel culture, demonization or mockery. People need to be able to exit with dignity. We need to find ways to allow people to return to society with their humanity intact, in a way that honors the very real questions that led them to look toward alternative answers in the first place.

nickwinlund77 quotes a New York Times opinion piece: In March, several cybercrime groups rushed to reassure people that they wouldn't target hospitals and other health care facilities during the Covid-19 pandemic. The operators of several prominent strains of ransomware all announced they would not target hospitals, and some of them even promised to decrypt the data of health care organizations for free if one was accidentally infected by their malware. But any cybersecurity strategy that relies on the moral compunctions of criminals is doomed to fail, particularly when it comes to protecting the notoriously vulnerable computer systems of hospitals.

So it's no surprise that Universal Health Services was hit by ransomware late last month, affecting many of its more than 400 health care facilities across the United States and Britain. Or that clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine have been held up by a similar ransomware attack disclosed in early October. Or that loose-knit coalitions of volunteers all over the world are working around the clock to try to protect the computer systems of hospitals that are already straining under the demands of providing patient care during a global pandemic.

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the potential consequences of these cyberattacks are terrifying. Hospitals that have lost access to their databases or had their networks infected by ransomware may not be able to admit patients in need of care or may take longer to provide those patients with the treatment they need, if they switch to relying on paper records...

Every hospital and clinic should be re-evaluating their computer networks right now and ramping up the protections they have in place to prevent their services from being interrupted by malware or their sensitive patient data from being stolen.

A threat intelligence firm called HYAS, a private company that tries to prevent or investigates hacks against its clients, is buying location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on peoples' phones around the world, and using it to unmask hackers. The company is a business, not a law enforcement agency, and claims to be able to track people to their "doorstep." From a report: The news highlights the complex supply chain and sale of location data, traveling from apps whose users are in some cases unaware that the software is selling their location, through to data brokers, and finally to end clients who use the data itself. The news also shows that while some location firms repeatedly reassure the public that their data is focused on the high level, aggregated, pseudonymous tracking of groups of people, some companies do buy and use location data from a largely unregulated market explicitly for the purpose of identifying specific individuals. HYAS' location data comes from X-Mode, a company that started with an app named "Drunk Mode," designed to prevent college students from making drunk phone calls and has since pivoted to selling user data from a wide swath of apps. Apps that mention X-Mode in their privacy policies include Perfect365, a beauty app, and other innocuous looking apps such as an MP3 file converter. "As a TI [threat intelligence] tool it's incredible, but ethically it stinks," a source in the threat intelligence industry who received a demo of HYAS' product told Motherboard.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: With so many people working remotely because of the coronavirus, surveillance software is flying off the virtual shelves. "Companies have been scrambling," said Brad Miller, CEO of surveillance-software maker InterGuard. "They're trying to allow their employees to work from home but trying to maintain a level of security and productivity." Along with InterGuard, software makers include Time Doctor, Teramind, VeriClock, innerActiv, ActivTrak and Hubstaff. All provide a combination of screen monitoring and productivity metrics, such as number of emails sent, to reassure managers that their charges are doing their jobs.

ActivTrak's inbound requests have tripled in recent weeks, according to CEO Rita Selvaggi. Teramind has seen a similar increase, said Eli Sutton, vice president of global operations. Jim Mazotas, innerActive's founder, said phones have been ringing off the hook. Managers using InterGuard's software can be notified if an employee does a combination of worrisome behaviors, such as printing both a confidential client list and a resume, an indication that someone is quitting and taking their book of business with them. "It's not because of lack of trust," Miller said, who compared the software to banks using security cameras. "It's because it's imprudent not to do it." The software can also be a way for employers to grant more flexibility to workers to fit their jobs around other parts of their lives. It may also let managers spot areas that are overstaffed or where they may need additional hands. Sutton from software maker Teramind says employers worried about workers' every moves might have a bigger issue to deal with. "It's not about spying on the user," Sutton said. "If you hired them, you should trust them. If you don't, they have no reason to be part of the organization."

Have you been required to use surveillance software while working from home? If so, which software is your employer using?

"27 GNU project maintainers and developers have signed on to a joint statement asking for Richard Stallman to be removed from his leadership role at GNU," writes Slashdot reader twocows.

The statement argues that "Stallman's behavior over the years has undermined a core value of the GNU project: The empowerment of all computer users. GNU is not fulfilling its mission when the behavior of its leader alienates a large part of those we want to reach out to."

The Register reports: The GNU maintainer memo follows a statement issued by the Free Software Foundation on Sunday. The FSF said that because Stallman founded the GNU Project and the FSF, and until recently had led both, the relationship between the two organizations remains in flux. "Since RMS resigned as president of the FSF, but not as head of GNU, the FSF is now working with GNU leadership on a shared understanding of the relationship for the future," the FSF said.

Matt Lee, a free and open-source software developer and one of the 18 [now 27] signatories of the joint statement, said that the two organizations have been intertwined for so long -- the FSF provides GNU with financial, technical, and promotional assistance -- that their relationship is confusing. "For example, the GNU GPL is published by the FSF, not GNU," Lee said. "Key infrastructure that GNU relies on is owned by the FSF, and used by GNU and non-GNU projects alike."
ZDNet reports: Stallman's only comment on this situation so far has been: "As head of the GNU Project, I will be working with the FSF on how to structure the GNU Project's relationship with the FSF in the future."
LWN.net notes that the next day Stallman issued an additional statement: As Chief GNUisance, I'd like to reassure the community that there won't be any radical changes in the GNU Project's goals, principles and policies.

I would like to make incremental changes in how some decisions are made, because I won't be here forever and we need to ready others to make GNU Project decisions when I can no longer do so. But these won't lead to unbounded or radical changes.
But the Register notes that Stallman's personal web site has also changed the first headline across the top of its page. It used to promote the Free Software Foundation's giving guide, saying "If you participate in the commercial ritual of end-of-the-year presents, please avoid the digital products that would mistreat the people you give them to."

It nows says: I continue to be the Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project.

I do not intend to stop any time soon.

"In the last week, two different people have captured video of Tesla vehicles traveling down a freeway with an apparently sleeping driver behind the wheel," writes Ars Technica.

A reader shares their report: Both incidents happened in California. Last week, local television stations in Los Angeles aired footage from viewer Shawn Miladinovich of a Tesla vehicle driving on LA's 405 freeway. The driver "was just fully sleeping, eyes were shut, hands nowhere near the steering wheel," said Miladinovich, who was a passenger in a nearby car, in an interview with NBC Channel 4. Miladinovich said he saw the vehicle twice, about 30 minutes apart, as both cars traveled along the 405 freeway. The driver appeared to be asleep both times...

Another video of an apparently sleeping Tesla driver was posted to Reddit over the weekend -- this one from the San Francisco Bay Area. The Reddit user who posted the video, MiloWee, said that she tried "several times" to wake him up by honking. "It worked, but he fell back asleep," she wrote....

Last month, police in the Netherlands pulled over a Tesla driver who appeared to be asleep and intoxicated. Another video posted in January appeared to show Tesla drivers asleep at the wheel. In an incident last November, it took police in Silicon Valley seven miles to pull over a Tesla car with an apparently sleeping driver. He was arrested for driving under the influence. Another driver in early 2018 was discovered passed out behind the wheel of his stopped Tesla vehicle on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the man "attempted to reassure arresting CHP officers onsite that the car was 'on autopilot.'"

The south-western Chinese city of Chengdu is planning to launch an illumination satellite in 2020 that is "designed to complement the moon at night," though it would be eight times as bright. "The 'dusk-like glow' of the satellite would be able to light an area with a diameter of 10-80km, while the precise illumination range could be controlled within tens of meters -- enabling it to replace streetlights," reports The Guardian. From the report: The vision was shared by Wu Chunfeng, the chairman of the private space contractor Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute Co (Casc), at a national mass innovation and entrepreneurship event held in Chengdu last week. Wu reportedly said testing had begun on the satellite years ago and the technology had now evolved enough to allow for launch in 2020. It is not clear whether the plan has the backing of the city of Chengdu or the Chinese government, though Casc is the main contractor for the Chinese space program.

The People's Daily was quick to reassure those concerned about the fake moon's impact on night-time wildlife. It cited Kang Weimin, director of the Institute of Optics, School of Aerospace, Harbin Institute of Technology, who "explained that the light of the satellite is similar to a dusk-like glow, so it should not affect animals' routines."

Tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have faced growing internal unrest from employees who raise ethical concerns about how the companies deploy their high-tech services and products. That chorus of dissent is now growing louder as outside engineers voice their concerns to recruiters working for those tech companies. An anonymous reader shares a report: The protests of tech workers have proven persuasive because Silicon Valley firms compete fiercely to recruit and retain relatively scarce engineering talent. For example, Google's leadership sought to reassure employees by declaring it would not renew its Pentagon contract and by issuing a set of ethical principles for future uses of Google-developed technologies. By the same logic, engineers who are approached by tech recruiters also have leverage. "I might be a one-off example, but it could be different if Amazon gets a lot of people emailing them saying, 'Hey I won't work for you because of this,'" Geiduschek, a software engineer at Dropbox, who declined a job offer from Amazon, says.

Jackie Luo, a software engineer at Square, took a similar stance with a tech recruiter who sought to interest her in a career with Google. The recruiter happened to contact Luo when she was reading about Google's plans to re-enter the Chinese market with a censored version of the company's Internet search engine. [...] Individual engineers such as Luo and Geiduschek seem to be responding to tech recruiters through their own initiative rather than as part of any larger movement. Meanwhile, some tech employees have joined organized efforts, such as the #TechWontBuildIt movement spearheaded by the labor advocacy group Tech Workers Coalition.