New Zealand has lodged a formal complaint with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) after a Canadian soccer "support staff member" allegedly flew a drone over their training session. The Canadian Olympic Committee has apologized, expressed shock and disappointment, and launched an investigation into the incident. ESPN reports: The COC said the individual has been detained by French authorities. "Team support members immediately reported the incident to police, leading to the drone operator, who has been identified as a support staff member of the wider Canadian Women's football team, to be detained," the NZOC said in a statement. "The NZOC has formally lodged the incident with the IOC integrity unit and has asked Canada for a full review. [...]

For their part, Canada has said it was also stunned. The COC said it was made aware that a "non-accredited" member of its support team had used a drone to record the Silver Ferns' practice. "The Canadian Olympic Committee stands for fair-play and we are shocked and disappointed. We offer our heartfelt apologies to New Zealand Football, to all the players affected, and to the New Zealand Olympic Committee." It added it was "reviewing next steps" with the IOC, the Paris organizing committee and FIFA. The person responsible was Joseph Lombardi, an unaccredited analyst with Canada Soccer. As a result of these findings, Lombardi is being removed from the Canadian Olympic Team and sent home immediately. The same punishment will be applied to Jasmine Mander, the assistant coach to whom Mr. Lombardi sent information to.

Furthermore, Head Coach Bev Priestman has removed herself from coaching the match against New Zealand on July 25th and the entire Canada Soccer staff will undergo mandatory ethics training.

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shared this report from Ars Technica: The United States Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) is currently evaluating a new generation of robotic "dogs" developed by Ghost Robotics, with the potential to be equipped with gun systems from defense tech company Onyx Industries, reports The War Zone.

While MARSOC is testing Ghost Robotics' quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicles (called "Q-UGVs" for short) for various applications, including reconnaissance and surveillance, it's the possibility of arming them with weapons for remote engagement that may draw the most attention. But it's not unprecedented: The US Marine Corps has also tested robotic dogs armed with rocket launchers in the past.

MARSOC is currently in possession of two armed Q-UGVs undergoing testing, as confirmed by Onyx Industries staff, and their gun systems are based on Onyx's SENTRY remote weapon system (RWS), which features an AI-enabled digital imaging system and can automatically detect and track people, drones, or vehicles, reporting potential targets to a remote human operator that could be located anywhere in the world. The system maintains a human-in-the-loop control for fire decisions, and it cannot decide to fire autonomously. On LinkedIn, Onyx Industries shared a video of a similar system in action.

In a statement to The War Zone, MARSOC states that weaponized payloads are just one of many use cases being evaluated. MARSOC also clarifies that comments made by Onyx Industries to The War Zone regarding the capabilities and deployment of these armed robot dogs "should not be construed as a capability or a singular interest in one of many use cases during an evaluation."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Parler, the self-described "uncancelable free speech platform," has been sold and shut down while its new owner conducts a "strategic assessment." The platform will be back eventually, new owner Starboard says. The Parler website is now a simple page containing only today's press release announcing the acquisition, which was completed without financial terms being disclosed. "No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more," the acquisition announcement said, promising a revamp.

"While the Parler app as it is currently constituted will be pulled down from operation to undergo a strategic assessment, we at Starboard see tremendous opportunities across multiple sectors to continue to serve marginalized or even outright censored communities -- even extending beyond domestic politics," the press release said. No timing for a return was mentioned. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Starboard founder and CEO Ryan Coyne said that Parler is "going to take a breath of fresh air." Ars notes that Starboard was formerly called Olympic Media and owns conservative news sites American Wire News and BizPac Review.

The previous owner, Parlement Technologies, tried to strike a deal to sell to Ye (formerly Kanye West) in mid-October but canceled the deal after Ye praised Hitler and Nazis. The company laid off a majority of its staff earlier this year.

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a sweeping report warning that the burgeoning "buy now, pay later" industry needs fresh regulation to address industry practices. From a report: CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said he's ordered staff to identify surveillance policies in the industry that need to be curtailed, including the collection of consumers' purchase and demographic data for targeted ads. Buy-now, pay-later providers will also have to undergo supervisory examinations similar to those applied to credit-card companies. "It might involve some new rules, some new guidance -- and more to come on that," Chopra said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Balance of Power With David Westin" after the report was released, adding that he asked CFPB staff to come up with a range of options to make sure there is fair competition between buy-now, pay-later firms and the credit-card companies.

"We want to make sure to take steps to prevent harm before it spreads." The proposals would mark the most extensive regulations yet to hit the sector, which has exploded in popularity in recent years by offering consumers ways to split purchases into smaller installments, often without charging interest. Instead, providers make most of their money by charging merchants a fee each time a consumer uses the product at checkout.

After persistent and often harsh criticism for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and now the monkeypox emergency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will undergo a significant overhaul, involving cultural and structural changes aimed at realizing its prior reputation as the world's premier public health agency. From a report: "For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in an email to CDC's 11,000-person staff Wednesday, which was seen by The New York Times and Stat News. "My goal is a new, public health action-oriented culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness."

Though the CDC endured meddling and undermining during the Trump administration, many of the agency's pandemic misfires were unforced errors -- such as the failure to stand up reliable SARS-CoV-2 testing in the early days and muddled messaging on masks. In a meeting with senior staff Wednesday, Walensky made a startling acknowledgement of the failures while outlining the overhaul in broad strokes. The cultural changes appear aimed at stamping out pedantic data analyses that have slowed and hampered the agency's public health responses. A briefing document provided to the Times said the goal is for CDC staff to "produce data for action" as opposed to "data for publication." As such, the agency will cut down on the time allowed to review studies before they're released. The agency will also change the way it grants promotions to staff, placing more emphasis on public health impact rather than the number of scientific publications.

Richard Stallman's name has now been taken off the official web page of the steering committee for GCC, reports IT Wire.

But they also note new changes this week in the management team of the Free Software Foundation: A statement from [FSF executive director John] Sullivan, deputy director John Hsieh, and chief technology officer Ruben Rodriguez on 30 March said: "As members of FSF management, we have decided to resign, with specific end dates to be determined. We believe in the importance of the FSF's mission and feel a new team will be better placed to implement recent changes in governance..." The resignations come in the wake of FSF founder Richard Stallman announcing on 19 March, during the organisation's annual LibrePlanet conference this year that he was rejoining the board.
"Some of our colleagues in the FSF have decided to resign," reads an official response from the FSF. "We are grateful for the good work they have done for so long, and we will miss them. We regret losing them; we regret the situation that has motivated them to leave."

Another FSF board member also resigned last week.

Meanwhile, Ars Technica reports the FSF has created a new seat on the board to be filled by someone from FSF union staff, with acting FSF President Geoffrey Knauth calling it "an important step in the FSF's effort to recognize and support new leadership, to connect that leadership to the community, to improve transparency and accountability, and to build trust. There is still considerable work to be done, and that work will continue."

Ars Technica adds: The elephant in the room that the FSF's remaining board members seem determined to ignore is the continued presence of Stallman himself — who, along with the rest of the FSF board, will soon need to undergo its new "transparent, formal process for identifying [members] who are wise, capable, and committed to the FSF's mission."

The coronavirus pandemic has gutted the so-called sharing economy. Its most valuable companies, which started the year by promising that they would soon become profitable, now say consumer demand has all but vanished. It is not likely to return anytime soon. From a report: In earnings reports this week, Uber and Lyft disclosed the depth of the financial damage. The companies said their ride-hailing businesses all but collapsed in March, the last month of the first quarter, as shelter-in-place orders spread through Europe and the United States. The red ink extends beyond ride hailing. The home-sharing company Airbnb, which investors valued at $31 billion, had planned to go public this year. Instead, the company has slashed costs and raised emergency funding, and on Tuesday it laid off 1,900 employees, about 25 percent of its staff. It also reduced its revenue forecast for this year to half of what it brought in last year. "While we know Airbnb's business will fully recover, the changes it will undergo are not temporary or short-lived," Brian Chesky, Airbnb's chief executive, wrote in a memo to employees.

Indonesia's Lion Air considered putting its pilots through simulator training before flying the Boeing 737 Max but abandoned the idea after the planemaker convinced them in 2017 it was unnecessary, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter and internal company communications. From the report: The next year, 189 people died when a Lion Air 737 Max plunged into the Java Sea, a disaster blamed in part on inadequate training and the crew's unfamiliarity with a new flight-control feature on the Max that malfunctioned. Boeing employees had expressed alarm among themselves over the possibility that one of the company's largest customers might require its pilots to undergo costly simulator training before flying the new 737 model, according to internal messages that have been released to the media. Those messages, included in the more than 100 pages of internal Boeing communications that the company provided to lawmakers and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and released widely on Thursday, had Lion Air's name redacted.

Last week, you asked questions (many rather pointed!) of Amir Taaki, co-founder of Bitcoin Consultancy, which develops Bitcoin related services, exchanges and Bitcoin itself. (They also own Britcoin.co.uk.) Says Taaki: "When creating video games I spent much time imagining tools to make artists lives easier, and how we could keep funding developers to write free software. One contribution of mine to the community was a site where developers could get funded for developing features and I'd love nothing more than to pay people to write free software." With regard to Bitcoin, similarly, "We need fulltime developers thinking about the problems and solutions needed to keep this system running. We aim to get all the creative thinkers from the community and provide a mechanism for enabling their work." Below find his answers to the questions readers raised.

Last year's Blizzcon was tremendously popular. So much so that their servers were unable to handle the strain of fans competing for 15,000 available tickets. This year, Blizzard was more prepared; they made an additional 5,000 tickets available and set up a queue so that the transaction servers weren't overwhelmed. CEO Mike Morhaime said during the keynote address that if you weren't able to get into the queue within 30 seconds of its opening, the tickets were sold out before your turn came. Tens of thousands more chose to order the pay-per-view coverage, demonstrating the extraordinary enthusiasm felt for Blizzard's games. Their presentations didn't disappoint. Read on for details on the status of StarCraft II, Diablo III, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and the new Battle.net. It's divided into sections by game in case you're only interested in one or two of them.