Slashdot

---

• A Government Watchdog May Have Missed Clearview AI Use By Five Federal Agencies
• Maine Passes the Strongest State Facial Recognition Ban Yet
• 'Great Resignation' Gains Steam As Return-To-Work Plans Take Effect
• Intel's New Optane SSD P5800X Is the Fastest SSD Drive Ever Made
• IBM's 18-Month Company-Wide Email System Migration Has Been a Disaster
• Huawei CFO Says HSBC Emails Disprove Basis For US Extradition Claim
• Apple Makes OS X Lion and Mountain Lion Free To Download
• Carrier Caught Injecting 'SMS AD' Into Google Verification Code Message
• Oklo Has a Plan To Make Tiny Nuclear Reactors That Run Off Nuclear Waste
• Amazon Demands One More Thing From Some Vendors: A Piece of Their Company
• Robinhood's Luster Stained Again With a Record $70 Million Fine
• At Nearly 116 Degrees, Heat in Western Canada Shatters National Record
• Tim Berners-Lee Sells Web Source Code NFT for $5.4 Million
• Microsoft Exec: Targeting of Americans' Records 'Routine'
• Google Is Working On an HTTPS-Only Mode For Chrome

A Government Watchdog May Have Missed Clearview AI Use By Five Federal Agencies Posted: 30 Jun 2021 08:30 PM PDT An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: A government inquiry into federal agencies' deployment of facial recognition may have overlooked some organizations' use of popular biometric identification software Clearview AI, calling into question whether authorities can understand the extent to which the emerging technology has been used by taxpayer-funded entities. In a 92-page report published by the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday, five agencies -- the US Capitol Police, the US Probation Office, the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, Transportation Security Administration, and the Criminal Investigation Division at the Internal Revenue Service -- said they didn't use Clearview AI between April 2018 and March 2020. This, however, contradicts internal Clearview data previously reviewed by BuzzFeed News. In April, BuzzFeed News revealed that those five agencies were among more than 1,800 US taxpayer-funded entities that had employees who tried or used Clearview AI, based on internal company data. As part of that story, BuzzFeed News published a searchable table disclosing all the federal, state, and city government organizations whose employees are listed in the data as having used the facial recognition software as of February 2020. While the GAO was tasked with "review[ing] federal law enforcement use of facial recognition technology," the discrepancies between the report, which was based on survey responses and BuzzFeed News' past reporting, suggest that even the US government may not be equipped to track how its own agencies access to surveillance tools like Clearview. The GAO report surveyed 42 federal agencies in total, 20 of which reported that they either owned their own facial recognition system or used one developed by a third party between April 2018 and March 2020. Ten federal agencies -- including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection -- said they specifically used Clearview AI. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maine Passes the Strongest State Facial Recognition Ban Yet Posted: 30 Jun 2021 07:02 PM PDT The state of Maine now has the most stringent laws regulating government use of facial recognition in the country. The Verge reports: The new law prohibits government use of facial recognition except in specifically outlined situations, with the most broad exception being if police have probable cause that an unidentified person in an image committed a serious crime, or for proactive fraud prevention. Since Maine police will not have access to facial recognition, they will be able to ask the FBI and Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) to run these searches. Crucially, the law plugs loopholes that police have used in the past to gain access to the technology, like informally asking other agencies or third parties to run backchannel searches for them. Logs of all facial recognition searches by the BMV must be created and are designated as public records. The only other state-wide facial recognition law was enacted by Washington in 2020, but many privacy advocates were dissatisfied with the specifics of the law. Maine's new law also gives citizens the ability to sue the state if they've been unlawfully targeted by facial recognition, which was notably absent from Washington's regulation. If facial recognition searches are performed illegally, they must be deleted and cannot be used as evidence. In response to this new law, the ACLU said: "Maine is showing the rest of the country what it looks like when we the people are in control of our civil rights and civil liberties, not tech companies that stand to profit from widespread government use of face surveillance technology." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'Great Resignation' Gains Steam As Return-To-Work Plans Take Effect Posted: 30 Jun 2021 06:25 PM PDT In what's been dubbed the "Great Resignation," a whopping 95% of workers are now considering changing jobs, and 92% are even willing to switch industries to find the right position, according to a recent report by jobs site Monster.com. CNBC reports: Most say burnout and lack of growth opportunities are what is driving the shift, Monster found. "When we were in the throes of the pandemic, so many people buckled down, now what we're seeing is a sign of confidence," said Scott Blumsack, senior vice president of research and insights at Monster. Already, a record 4 million people quit their jobs in April alone, according to the Labor Department. At the same time, there are more opportunities for job seekers -- with the Labor Department reporting a record 9.3 million job openings as of the latest tally. "The number of open jobs is higher than ever before, that's absolutely contributing to why candidates are putting their toe in the water to see what's out there," Blumsack said. As Covid vaccinations gain steam, so are plans to return to the office, which is driving more workers to consider their options. In a survey of more than 350 CEOs and human resources and finance leaders, 70% said they plan to have employees back in the office by the fall of this year -- if not sooner -- according to a report by staffing firm LaSalle Network. Of the companies that are planning for office reentry, managing employees who want to continue working remotely is a top concern, LaSalle Network found. "If we see a wave of employees leaving, companies are going to have to figure it out," Reitan said. The report goes on to cite a separate survey from McKinsey that says 9 out of 10 organizations will now be combining remote and on-site working. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel's New Optane SSD P5800X Is the Fastest SSD Drive Ever Made Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:45 PM PDT MojoKid writes: Intel recently shifted its storage strategy somewhat and is now catering its flagship Optane SSD P5800X, which was formerly targeted solely at data centers, to workstation users. The Optane SSD P5800X is based on a proprietary PCIe Gen 4x4 native controller and it features Intel's second-generation Intel Optane memory. In terms of performance, in some of the first benchmark numbers to hit the web, the drive is an absolute beast in the workloads that matter most for the vast majority of workstation users and enthusiasts. Random reads and writes are exceptionally good and access times at low queue depths are best-of-class. The Optane SSD P5800X's sequential transfers, while strong, aren't quite on the same level as some of today's fastest NAND-based PCIe 4 solid state drives, but they do exceed 7GB/s, which is still extremely fast. Overall, it's essentially the fastest SSD ever made. Endurance is off the charts too. However, all of that SSD horsepower comes at a price though, at a little over $2.50 per Gig and over $2,000 for an 800GB drive. With capacities of 400GB, 800GB and 1.6TB, the new Intel Optane SSD P5800X is shipping and available now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM's 18-Month Company-Wide Email System Migration Has Been a Disaster Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:02 PM PDT An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: IBM's planned company-wide email migration has gone off the rails, leaving many employees unable to use email or schedule calendar events. And this has been going on for several days. Current and former IBMers have confirmed to The Register that the migration, 18 months in the making, has been a disaster. We've been told that email service has been intermittent for the past four or five days, and not everyone has been affected in the same way. Lack of access has been shorter for some -- one source told us email was back after two days of downtime. Slack is said to be working though Outlook, Verse (IBM's webmail), and Notes have been unreliable. "Outlook won't work with the new system, IBM Notes won't work and the online email called Verse has now gone down," a tipster told us. "Everyone has been affected and no fix is in sight." One source we spoke with laid the blame on IBM CFO James Kavanaugh for cutting costs and not hiring the right people. Over the weekend, a source told us, a blog post to IBM's internal network w3 said the migration had been planned for 18 months and that everything should go fine provided everyone follows the instructions emailed to them. Evidently, this did not happen. Since then, a banner has gone up on w3 pointing people to a Slack channel for updates on the situation, and IBM's CIO has posted a note to employees addressing the problems. Presently, the w3 status page returns an error. We're told that the migration plan followed from IBM's decision in 2018 to sell various software products, including Notes, to India-based HCL Technologies. Following the sale, Big Blue didn't want its data on HCL's servers. "They were transitioning to IBM-owned servers," one source told us. "That's where it broke down." There's also concern that "disappeared messages may not be restored," says The Register. "We've even heard that IBM employees have been approached by recruiters posing questions like, 'Why are you still at IBM? They can't even get email straight.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Huawei CFO Says HSBC Emails Disprove Basis For US Extradition Claim Posted: 30 Jun 2021 04:20 PM PDT AltMachine shares a report from Reuters: "Lawyers fighting the extradition of Huawei's chief financial officer to the United States on Tuesday presented internal emails from British bank HSBC that they said disproved U.S. claims that Huawei misled the bank," reports Reuters. "CFO Meng Wanzhou's legal team said the emails and documents submitted to a Canadian court showed at least two senior HSBC leaders were aware of connections between Huawei and its Iranian subsidiary, Skycom. Meng's lawyers are trying to add the documents to evidence. They are meant to counter U.S. charges that only junior employees of the British bank knew about the true nature of relationship between Huawei and Skycom. U.S. prosecutors have alleged that Meng misled HSBC about Huawei's business dealings in Iran and may have caused the bank to break U.S. sanctions." Business dealings with Iran was not illegal under Canada laws as the sanction was not a UN resolution and had no legal basis internationally. The only way for the extradition to proceed would be to show Huawei misled HSBC which operates in the U.S. Amid intensifying US-China technology and economic rivalry, it is not the first time the U.S. law enforcement fabricating false accusation against Chinese or China-linked persons. Earlier in April, U.S. court trial reveals federal agents falsely accused a UT professor born in China of spying and three Congressmen are asking the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General to "review whether the China Initiative puts untoward pressure on DOJ personnel to engage in racial or ethnic profiling." Federal agents falsely accused Hu of spying for China based solely on a Google search, testimony revealed. After Hu refused to work as a spy for the U.S. government, agents stalked and harassed him for more than two years, leading to the destruction of his reputation and internationally renowned career. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Makes OS X Lion and Mountain Lion Free To Download Posted: 30 Jun 2021 03:40 PM PDT Mac OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion can now be downloaded for free from Apple's website. "Apple has kept OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion available for customers who have machines limited to the older software, but until recently, Apple was charging $19.99 to get download codes for the updates," notes MacRumors. "The $19.99 fee dates back to when Apple used to charge for Mac updates. Apple began making Mac updates free with the launch of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, which also marked the shift from big cat names to California landmark names." From the report: Mac OS X Lion is compatible with Macs that have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor, a minimum of 2GB RAM, and 7GB storage space. Mac OS X Mountain Lion is compatible with the following Macs: iMac (Mid 2007-2020), MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer), MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer), MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer), Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer), Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer), and Xserve (Early 2009). Macs that shipped with Mac OS X Mavericks or later are not compatible with the installer, however. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Carrier Caught Injecting 'SMS AD' Into Google Verification Code Message Posted: 30 Jun 2021 03:02 PM PDT An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: SMS is widely regarded as an insecure form of two-factor authentication, and another example of this has just emerged. A carrier looks to be injecting ads into the Google verification code used to sign in to services like Gmail. Action Launcher developer Chris Lacy today tweeted how his Google verification code -- which starts with "G-" -- featured an "SMS AD." The advertisement -- for a VPN -- includes a quick message and short URL. For those that immediately suspect this is just a phishing attempt, the verification code is legitimate and was requested by Lacy to successfully verify a login attempt. Google Messages even flagged the link/message as spam. As such, Googlers responding to the thread suspect this is an occurrence of a carrier appending an ad -- note the extra spaces -- into a real text message. It's very unlikely that Google's security teams would allow advertising into a very crucial part of the login process where end user trust is paramount. Google issued the following statement to us today: "These are not our ads and we are currently working with the wireless carrier to understand why this happened." Google confirms that the "SMS AD" did not originate from its own advertising network. Meanwhile, it's working with the wireless carrier in question to find out what occurred. Lacy has decided "not to state the carrier for privacy reasons," and Google did not share that information either. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oklo Has a Plan To Make Tiny Nuclear Reactors That Run Off Nuclear Waste Posted: 30 Jun 2021 02:23 PM PDT An anonymous reader shares a report: The face of nuclear energy is changing, and one of the companies working to redefine what nuclear energy looks like is Oklo. The 22-person Silicon Valley start-up has a plan to build mini-nuclear reactors, powered by the waste of conventional nuclear reactors and housed in aesthetically pleasing A-frame structures. "Microreactors are an exciting innovation that completely flips the technology story for nuclear energy," Alex Gilbert, a project manager for nuclear power think tank the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, told CNBC. Historically, nuclear energy producers aimed to be competitive with "economies of scale," meaning they save money by being massive, Gilbert said. That strategy, however, often results in construction projects being mired in delays and cost overruns, like the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, where estimates for the project have ballooned from $14 billion to an estimated $27 billion or more. "Microreactors promise to turn this paradigm on its head by approaching cost competitiveness through technological learning," Gilbert said. Oklo is the brainchild of the husband-and-wife co-founder team, Jacob DeWitte and Caroline Cochran, who met when they were teaching assistants in 2009 for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Reactor Technology Course for utility executives with nuclear power plants as part of their grid. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon Demands One More Thing From Some Vendors: A Piece of Their Company Posted: 30 Jun 2021 01:42 PM PDT Suppliers that want to land Amazon as a client for their goods and services can find that its business comes with a catch: the right for Amazon to buy big stakes in their companies at potentially steep discounts to market value. The Wall Street Journal: The technology-and-retail giant has struck at least a dozen deals with publicly traded companies in which it gets rights, called warrants, to buy the vendors' stock in the future at what could be below-market prices, according to corporate filings and interviews with people involved with the deals. Amazon over the past decade also has done more than 75 such deals with privately held companies, according to a person familiar with the matter. In all, the tech titan's stakes and potential stakes amount to billions of dollars across companies that provide everything from call-center services to natural gas, and in some cases position Amazon among the top shareholders in those businesses. The unusual arrangements offer another window into how Amazon uses its market heft to increase its wealth and clout. The company has been under growing scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers over its competitive practices, including with companies it partners with. While the deals can benefit the suppliers by locking in big contracts, which can also boost their share prices, executives at several of the companies said they felt they couldn't refuse Amazon's push for the right to buy the stock without risking a major contract. The deals in some cases also give Amazon rights such as board representation and the ability to top any acquisition offers from other companies. For Amazon, the arrangements give it a piece of the potential upside the vendors can get from doing business with one of the world's biggest companies. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Robinhood's Luster Stained Again With a Record $70 Million Fine Posted: 30 Jun 2021 01:01 PM PDT An anonymous reader shares a report: Robinhood Markets unleashed a revolution, marshaling throngs of new traders to financial markets in an upside-down year. But the free trading app's breakneck growth hurt the same small-time investors it sought to empower. That's the accusation leveled by Wall Street's self-funded watchdog, which extracted almost $70 million from the brokerage in a record settlement Wednesday, including a $57 million fine and about $12.6 million in payments to aggrieved customers. It follows Robinhood's meteoric rise against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and the frenzy over hot stocks such as GameStop Corp. that warped the realm of retail trading. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At Nearly 116 Degrees, Heat in Western Canada Shatters National Record Posted: 30 Jun 2021 12:23 PM PDT The heat is expected to continue for several days in some parts of British Columbia, according to weather warnings from the government. From a report: Vancouverites were frying eggs on pans placed on their terraces. One man checked into an air-conditioned five-star hotel, after the five fans aimed at his bed at home and the seventh cold shower failed to bring relief. Lettuce plants shriveled in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia's picturesque wine region. Flowers wilted. People wilted. The heat wave across western Canada has much of a country known for its sweater weather sweating. Canada broke a national heat record on Sunday when the temperature in a small town in British Columbia reached almost 116 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking an 84-year-old record by nearly 3 degrees, with dangerously hot weather expected to continue for several more days. "This is a complete shock to a Canadian -- this feels like Las Vegas or India -- not Vancouver," said Chris Johnson, a criminal lawyer who on Monday was heading to an air-conditioned hotel room as temperatures inside his home reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Tying any one weather event to climate change requires extensive attribution analysis, but heat waves around the world are growing more frequent, longer-lasting and more dangerous, experts say. David Phillips, a senior climatologist at Environment Canada, a government agency, said the early timing of this one, its intensity and its duration, could all be attributable to rising global temperatures. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tim Berners-Lee Sells Web Source Code NFT for $5.4 Million Posted: 30 Jun 2021 11:46 AM PDT The original source code for the world wide web has been sold as a non-fungible token, making $5.4m. From a report: NFTs are certificates of ownership for digital assets, which often do not have a physical representation. They do not necessarily include copyright control -- and critics say they are get-rich-quick schemes that are bad for the environment. World-wide-web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee sold the NFT to an unidentified buyer, through auction house Sotheby's. The highest bid stood at $3.5m for most of the last day of the auction -- but there were a flurry of bids in the closing 15 minutes. The auction began on 23 June, with an opening bid of $1,000. Further reading: Tim Berners-Lee Defends Auction of NFT Representing Web's Source Code. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Exec: Targeting of Americans' Records 'Routine' Posted: 30 Jun 2021 11:12 AM PDT Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year, according to congressional testimony Wednesday by a senior executive at the technology company. From a report: Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day. "Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American's email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud," said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms. The relationship between law enforcement and Big Tech has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent weeks with the revelation that Trump-era Justice Department prosecutors obtained as part of leak investigations phone records belonging not only to journalists but also to members of Congress and their staffers. Microsoft, for instance, was among the companies that turned over records under a court order, and because of a gag order, had to then wait more than two years before disclosing it. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Is Working On an HTTPS-Only Mode For Chrome Posted: 30 Jun 2021 10:34 AM PDT An anonymous reader writes: Following in the footsteps of browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome is also in line to receive an HTTPS-Only Mode that will upgrade all unencrypted HTTP connections to encrypted HTTPS alternatives, where possible. Currently, the new Chrome HTTPS-Only Mode is still under development in Chrome Canary distributions. Work is being done to add specific settings in the browser's interface, and no actual HTTP-to-HTTPS functionality is currently present. The feature is expected to be ready for Chrome 93, set to be released later this fall. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You are subscribed to email updates from Slashdot. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States