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Information released under data protection laws sheds light on apparent effort to undermine Canadian research group Citizen Lab. From a report: When Downing Street was recently named as the suspected victim of a phone hack by the United Arab Emirates using the Israeli-made spyware, Pegasus, few were surprised at who was behind the discovery. The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto has for years been a thorn in the side of the NSO Group, deciphering the company's sophisticated hacking tools and -- crucially -- identifying victims of the spyware. Ron Deibert, the longtime director of the Canadian research group, is one of the world's leading experts on identifying digital threats against civil society. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, is among a relatively small group of experts globally who can identify which iPhones and Android devices have been infected with Pegasus, and which government clients are likely to have been responsible.
It is unsurprising, then, that the pair were an intense focus at Novalpina, the London-based private equity group which took over NSO Group in 2019, and quickly sought to stem its reputation for enabling repressive governments to commit widespread human rights abuses. Using UK data protection laws, Deibert and Scott-Railton last year sought the personal data held on them by Novalpina. The results of their so-called subject access requests, recently shared with the Guardian, contain snippets of hundreds of emails and attachments that included their names. The released data, combined with information from other sources, sheds light on an apparent attempt by Novalpina partner Stephen Peel to gather information on and undermine Citizen Lab. In one case, he even reached out to George Soros, whose foundation is an important Citizen Lab donor, and complained about the researchers.
China is preparing to hit pause on its monthslong campaign against technology companies, WSJ reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, as officials seek to arrest a rapid deterioration in the country's economic outlook. From the report: China's top internet regulator is set to meet next week with the country's embattled tech giants to discuss the regulatory campaign, according to the people, who described the meeting as a sign that officials acknowledge the toll the regulations have had on the private sector at a time when China's economic outlook is increasingly clouded due to strict COVID measures. Regulators are planning to hold off on new rules that limit the time that young people spend on mobile apps, according to one of the people, while another person said that Beijing is considering pushing some of its biggest tech companies to offer 1% equity stakes to the state and give the government a direct role in corporate decisions.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: Microsoft is testing a VPN-like service for its Edge browser, adding a new layer of security and privacy to the browsing experience. A recently-discovered support page on Microsoft's website details the "Microsoft Edge Secure Network" feature, which provides data encryption and prevents online tracking, courtesy of Cloudflare. While it isn't available yet, even if you have the latest Dev channel build, the Microsoft Edge Secure Network feature appears to be similar in nature to Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 service. This is essentially a proxy or VPN service, which encrypts your browsing data so that it's safe from prying eyes, including your ISP. It also keeps your location private, so you can use it to access geo-restricted websites, or content that's blocked in your country.
Microsoft Edge's Secure Network mode will require you to be signed into your Microsoft account, and that's because the browser keeps track of how much data you've used in this mode. You get 1GB of free data per month, and that's tied to your Microsoft account. Most VPN services aren't free, so this shouldn't come as a surprise. Cloudflare itself doesn't keep any personally-identifiable user data, and any data related to browsing sessions is deleted every 25 hours. Information related to your data usage is also deleted at the end of each monthly period.
An enzyme variant created by engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin can break down environment-throttling plastics that typically take centuries to degrade in just a matter of hours to days. Phys.Org reports: This discovery, published today in Nature, could help solve one of the world's most pressing environmental problems: what to do with the billions of tons of plastic waste piling up in landfills and polluting our natural lands and water. The enzyme has the potential to supercharge recycling on a large scale that would allow major industries to reduce their environmental impact by recovering and reusing plastics at the molecular level. [...] The project focuses on polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a significant polymer found in most consumer packaging, including cookie containers, soda bottles, fruit and salad packaging, and certain fibers and textiles. It makes up 12% of all global waste. The enzyme was able to complete a "circular process" of breaking down the plastic into smaller parts (depolymerization) and then chemically putting it back together (repolymerization). In some cases, these plastics can be fully broken down to monomers in as little as 24 hours.
Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering and College of Natural Sciences used a machine learning model to generate novel mutations to a natural enzyme called PETase that allows bacteria to degrade PET plastics. The model predicts which mutations in these enzymes would accomplish the goal of quickly depolymerizing post-consumer waste plastic at low temperatures. Through this process, which included studying 51 different post-consumer plastic containers, five different polyester fibers and fabrics and water bottles all made from PET, the researchers proved the effectiveness of the enzyme, which they are calling FAST-PETase (functional, active, stable and tolerant PETase). [...] Up next, the team plans to work on scaling up enzyme production to prepare for industrial and environmental application. The researchers have filed a patent application for the technology and are eying several different uses. Cleaning up landfills and greening high waste-producing industries are the most obvious. But another key potential use is environmental remediation. The team is looking at a number of ways to get the enzymes out into the field to clean up polluted sites.
Researchers in Japan have developed a new method for making 5-cm (2-in) wafers of diamond that could be used for quantum memory. The ultra-high purity of the diamond allows it to store a staggering amount of data -- the equivalent of one billion Blu-Ray discs. New Atlas reports: [R]esearchers at Saga University and Adamant Namiki Precision Jewelery Co. in Japan have developed a new method for manufacturing ultra-high purity diamond wafers that are big enough for practical use. With this technique, the team says the resulting diamond wafers measure 5 cm across, and have such immense data density that they can theoretically store the equivalent of a billion Blu-Ray discs. One Blu-Ray can store up to 25 GB (assuming it's single-layered), which would mean this diamond wafer should be able to store a whopping 25 exabytes (EB) of data. The company calls these wafers Kenzan Diamond. The key is that these diamonds have a nitrogen concentration of under three parts per billion (ppb), making them incredibly pure. The researchers say that these are the largest wafers with that level of purity -- most others only get to 4 mm2 (0.006 in2) at most.
Achieving this requires a new manufacturing technique. Diamond wafers are made by growing the crystals on a substrate material, and that material is usually a flat surface. The problem is, the diamond can crack under the strain, degrading the quality. In the new process, the team made a relatively simple change -- the substrate surface was shaped like steps, which spreads the strain horizontally and prevents cracking. This allows them to make larger diamond wafers with higher purity. The team hopes to commercialize these diamond wafers in 2023, and in the meantime are already working towards doubling the diameter to 10 cm (4 in).
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Smithsonian Magazine: The sea changes are already happening. Earth's oceans are warmer than they were a century ago, sea levels are rising, and ocean waters are more acidic than they used to be, all because of human-created climate change. Global temperatures are expected rise even further in the coming decades, leaving researchers to wonder how these alterations will affect life on Earth -- and especially in the seas. But the oceans have been through major crises before -- including at least five mass extinctions -- and those events in the deep past can help outline what might happen in our near future. To better understand what trends to expect, Princeton University oceanographers Justin Penn and Curtis Deutsch applied a scientific model used to predict the extent of a past mass extinction to estimate the consequences of current global warming. Their research, published today in Science, warns that failing to reduce fossil fuel emissions will set Earth's oceans on track for a mass extinction within the next 300 years. This potential disaster will have uneven consequences across the seas. While the temperatures of both the global climate and the oceans are rising, the consequences will differ from place to place. How ocean life at the North and South poles respond will be different than species in the tropics.
Under the worst-case scenarios, the researchers found, extinctions in the oceans will likely mimic the die offs that have occurred during Earth's five mass extinctions as organisms struggle to find suitable habitat in warmer, likely oxygen-depleted waters. Ecosystems where oxygen levels in the water are already low, like in the tropical seas of the Indo-Pacific Ocean, are likely to be hit especially hard as seawater may lack the oxygen required to support the diverse creatures that live there. Polar seas, too, will likely see die offs as waters become too warm for cold-adapted species.
The study does have some limitations, [...] including that it does not consider other factors affecting ocean biodiversity such as overfishing and pollution. Researchers also need more information about the metabolic requirements of many different ocean organisms. Nevertheless, the study makes a solid case that many marine species can't simply move to another place and changes in ocean warmth will make it much more difficult for many species to survive. The long view is especially needed. [...] Looking centuries into the future, the new study emphasizes that now is the time to forestall some of these possible consequences for our oceans. The global climate is expected to get about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by 2100. If emissions can be curbed and warming kept around this minimum, then these mass extinction scenarios can be avoided. [...] The study outlines two possible scenarios. Continued and unmitigated fossil fuel emissions will eventually recreate conditions of some of Earth's worst biological crises. If emission trends can be reversed, however, there is greater hope for the future of the ocean's ecosystems and biodiversity.
According to a survey of 501 people conducted by insurance company Progressive, most people prefer the process of buying a car online than at dealerships. Autoblog reports: Based on the 251 people who completed a transaction entirely online or through a dealer web site, and the 250 who did solely face-to-face business, there are two big takeaways. The first is that online shopping, still a small percentage of overall car sales, is growing rapidly in acceptance and actual transactions. [...] The second takeaway is that millennials are a major part of the online sales growth.
Overall, though, online shoppers expressed more joy with the process than showroom floor shoppers. Compared to 78% of buyers highly satisfied with buying a car online, only 58% of in-person shoppers registered the same pleasure. That carried through to trade-ins and financing as well. Eighty percent of online shoppers were highly satisfied with the trade-in process, versus 57% of dealership visitors; 70% of online shoppers gave the highest marks to the financing process as opposed to 53% of guests asked to "Step into the office" and wait while the salesperson conferred with the finance manager.
The European Union has joined the social network Mastodon, which has seen a staggering 30,000 new users after Elon Musk's bid for Twitter was accepted. PC Magazine reports: On Thursday, the European Commission said it had set up its own server, dubbed EU Voice, to join Mastodon's decentralized social network, also known as a "Fediverse." The effort is currently only a pilot, but it represents the EU's goal of supporting private and open-source software capable of rivaling mainstream social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. On the same day, the European Commission also launched an account for PeerTube, another decentralized platform that revolves around video sharing. "With the pilot launch of EU Voice and EU Video, we aim to offer alternative social media platforms that prioritize individuals and their rights to privacy and data protection," said European Data Protection Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiorowski.
"In concrete terms this means, for example, that EU Voice and EU Video do not rely on transfers of personal data to countries outside the European Union and the European Economic Area; there are no advertisements on the platforms; and there is no profiling of individuals that may use the platforms," he added. "These measures, amongst others, give individuals the choice on and control over how their personal data is used."
According to Breaking Defense, the head of machine learning at Lyft, Craig Martell, has been named the Pentagon's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer. From the report: The hiring of a Silicon Valley persona for the CDAO role is likely to be cheered by those in the defense community who have been calling for more technically-minded individuals to take leadership roles in the department. At the same time, Martell's lack of Pentagon experience -- he was a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School for over a decade studying AI for the military, but has never worked in the department's bureaucracy -- may pose challenges as he works to lead an office only months old. In an exclusive interview with Breaking Defense, Martell, who also worked as head of machine learning at Dropbox and led several AI teams at LinkedIn, acknowledged both the benefits and risks of bringing in someone with his background. [...]
As CDAO, Martell will be responsible for scaling up DoD's data, analytics and AI to enable quicker and more accurate decision-making and will also play an important role in the Pentagon's Joint All-Domain Command and Control efforts to connect sensors and shooters. "If we're going to be successful in achieving the goals, if we're going to be successful in being competitive with China, we have to figure out where the best mission value can be found first and that's going to have to drive what we build, what we design, the policies we come up with," Martell said. "I just want to guard against making sure that we don't do this in a vacuum, but we do it with real mission goals, real mission objectives in mind."
His first order of business? Figuring out what needs to be done, and how to best use the $600 million in fiscal year 2023 dollars the CDAO's office was marked for in the Pentagon's most recent budget request. "So whenever I tackle a problem, whenever I go into a new organization, the first questions that I ask are: Do we have the right people? Do we have the right processes? Do we have the right tools to solve the visions [and] goals?" Martell said. To tackle that, Martell wants to identify the office's "marquee customers" and figure out what's "broken in terms of... people, platform, processes and tools" -- a process that could take anywhere from three to six months, he added. "We really want to be customer-driven here," Martell said. "We don't want to walk in and say if we build it, they'll come."
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Qualcomm bought a chipmaking startup called Nuvia back in March of 2021, and later that year, the company said it would be using Nuvia's talent and technology to create high-performance custom-designed ARM chips to compete with Apple's processor designs. But if you're waiting for a truly high-performance Windows PC with anything other than an Intel or AMD chip in it, you'll still be waiting for a bit. Qualcomm CEO Christian Amon mentioned during the company's most recent earnings call that its high-performance chips were on track to land in consumer devices "in late 2023."
Qualcomm still plans to sample chips to its partners later in 2022, a timeframe it has mentioned previously and has managed to stick to. A gap between sampling and mass production is typical, giving Qualcomm time to work out bugs and improve chip yields and PC manufacturers more time to design and build finished products that incorporate the chips. [...] Like Apple's processors, Nuvia's support the ARM instruction set but don't use off-the-shelf ARM Cortex CPU designs. These processor cores have been phenomenally successful in commodity SoCs that power everything from Android phones to smart TVs, and they helped popularize the practice of combining large, high-performance CPU cores and small, high-efficiency CPU cores together in the same design. But they rarely manage to top the performance charts, something that's especially noticeable when they're running x86 code on Windows with a performance penalty.
Even as it deals with continued supply constraints and consumers wary of inflation, Apple today reported the best March quarter in its history. The Verge reports: The company tallied $97.3 billion in revenue in Q2, up 9 percent over the year-ago quarter. That amounted to a profit of $25 billion, with earnings per share of $1.52. Apple set March quarter revenue records for its iPhone, Mac, and Wearables / Home / Accessories divisions. But the second quarter saw a slowdown in iPad sales, which were down slightly year over year. Apple's various services grew to a new high of 825 million subscribers, up 165 million from the total a year ago.
The increase in iPhone revenue comes even after Apple noted that the year-ago Q2 saw very strong iPhone demand due to the iPhone 12 series launching a bit later in the fall than normal. New products released by Apple during the March quarter included the third-gen iPhone SE, green colors of the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro, the powerful Mac Studio desktop, and the 5K Studio Display external monitor.
Khan Academy, a non-profit educational organization that offers free online tools to help students learn, is opening an online global high school in August 2022. "This full-time online school will combine the expertise of Khan Lab School, Schoolhouse.world, and ASU Prep Digital in a unique model based on the principles of the [...] founder of Khan Academy," says the company in a press release. "The core principles include mastery-based learning, personalization of each student's experience and learning together as a community." From the report: Each day will include a seminar where small student peer groups will have the opportunity to interact online and actively dive deep into society's most challenging questions with support from mentors and world-class learning guides. This inaugural class of 9th graders will work together solving real-world problems in a unique virtual school model that rewards curiosity, empowers agency and provides them with the skills and confidence needed to excel in college and careers. The organization is partnering with Arizona State University to make this initiative possible. Out-of-state students will need to pay tuition to attend, but Arizona residents will be able to attend for free.
"Interested students will need to apply through ASU Prep Digital, the full-time online school," notes the press release. "The 2022-23 class is open to incoming 9th grade students with plans to expand the program to grades 9-12 the following year."
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: More than 55 countries and the United States announced their commitment Thursday to defending a free and open internet, agreeing to uphold digital human rights in response to rising authoritarianism in cyberspace. The agreement (PDF), known as the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, aims to forestall an emerging "splinternet" characterized by the growing repression of internet users in closed regimes such as Russia and China -- and the divergence of those countries from the internet's founding principles of universal access and unfettered information flow. Concerns about the internet's long-term trajectory have been amplified by the war in Ukraine, according to senior Biden administration officials, as Russia has moved to block western social media services and penalized the sharing of accurate information about the conflict.
Many of the commitments outlined in the agreement reflect existing US policy initiatives, and the administration officials described the declaration as a way to organize and harmonize those efforts internationally. Under the agreement, countries have pledged not to abuse internet technologies for illegal surveillance; block content or websites in violation of so-called net neutrality principles; or use digital tools to undermine trust in elections. They agreed to support multilateral efforts against cybercrime, an issue that's grown in significance as businesses and governments alike have reeled in the face of devastating ransomware attacks. They committed to using only "trustworthy" network equipment, a nod to the spying risks the US and its allies have said are associated with Chinese vendors such as Huawei. And they joined together in reaffirming support for the decentralized, consensus-driven approach that for decades has underpinned decisions about how the internet should work.
Microsoft Edge could soon receive an integrated VPN service called the "Microsoft Edge Secure Network." The VPN (Virtual Private Network) service would work very similar to commercial VPN services, but it could be deeply integrated within the Microsoft Edge browser. From a report: The VPN service will be powered by Cloudflare. The company assures it permanently deletes the diagnostic and support data collected, every 25 hours.
Google says it's expanding the types of personal information that it'll remove from search results to cover things like your physical address, phone number, and passwords. From a report:: Before now, the feature mostly covered info that would let someone steal your identity or money -- now, you can ask Google to stop showing certain URLs that point to info that could lead someone to your house or give them access to your accounts. According to a blog post, Google's giving people the new options because "the internet is always evolving" and its search engine giving out your phone number or home address can be both jarring and dangerous. Here's a list of what kinds of info Google may remove, with the new additions in bold (h/t to the Wayback Machine for making the old list accessible): Confidential government identification (ID) numbers like U.S. Social Security Number, Argentine Single Tax Identification Number, etc, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, images of handwritten signatures, images of ID docs, highly personal, restricted, and official records, like medical records (used to read "confidential personal medical records"), personal contact info (physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses), and confidential login credentials.