While EVs are still in the single-digit area of overall vehicle sales, they continue to climb and have already surpassed the sales of vehicles with manual transmissions. Now it seems that the electrification investments made by automakers are getting a boost from another part of the country. From a report: Massachusetts is joining California with a plan to ban the sale of new gasolined-powered cars by 2035. Governor Charlie Baker released a 2050 decarbonization road map that includes the reduction of emissions from passenger cars. Massachusetts states that 27 percent of statewide emissions come from light-duty vehicles (passenger vehicles). The goal is for the state to reach net-zero fossil-fuel emissions by 2050. In order to make sure those EVs are actually usable, the state plans to expand the public charging infrastructure to take into account that many people don't have a garage in which to charge an electric vehicle. The initiatives by California and now Massachusetts could be the beginning of a trend by states to slowly ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles. Several European countries have the same types of measures in order to battle climate change. Meanwhile, President-Elect Joe Biden has a plan to speed up the electrification of vehicles in the United States that includes replacing the country's fleets with EVs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than 100,000 Zyxel firewalls, VPN gateways, and access point controllers contain a hardcoded admin-level backdoor account that can grant attackers root access to devices via either the SSH interface or the web administration panel. From a report: The backdoor account, discovered by a team of Dutch security researchers from Eye Control, is considered as bad as it gets in terms of vulnerabilities. Device owners are advised to update systems as soon as time permits. Security experts warn that anyone ranging from DDoS botnet operators to state-sponsored hacking groups and ransomware gangs could abuse this backdoor account to access vulnerable devices and pivot to internal networks for additional attacks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While publishers and stores feared COVID-19 would be an extinction-level threat, the industry has proved more resilient than thought. From a report: In March, when COVID-19 hit the comic industry in earnest, many retailers and publishers feared it would be an apocalyptic event for the business. Stay-at-home orders shuttered stores, and shipments of new product ceased for several months when Diamond Comics Distributors hit pause. Stores have struggled to survive, and some have shuttered permanently. However, months after the comic book industry restarted -- accompanied by a publicity campaign proclaiming that the industry's "comeback will be bigger than [the] setback" -- there are multiple signs that comics has proven to be far stronger than anyone, including those inside the industry, expected in the face of an uncertain year. "The biggest surprise started during May and June, as we were allowed to reopen, comics started shipping again, and customers were slowly starting to come back to the shop. Customers were buying comics. A lot of comics," California retailer Ryan Higgins tells THR. With comic conventions canceled and people not taking vacations, many fans concentrated on making their collections more complete. "Comic supplies sales skyrocketed right away as people took this time to clean up their collection," says Higgins. "New titles were selling better than we ever expected, graphic novel sales spiked, and back issues jumped dramatically in price and flew out the door just as fast. Sales during the summer and early fall months were just unbelievable." [...] A key metric for the health of the industry is how many comics stores are ordering. Those numbers are moving in the right direction. "March 2020 saw Diamond ship 5.9 million comics; September and October were both over 7 million copies each," writes analyst John Jackson Miller in an email to THR. "Those are both behind the equivalent months in 2019; October 2019, with the X-Men relaunch, was the fourth best month of the decade of the 2010s. But per release, the sales levels are improved, and as the number of releases continues to build back, you can see it fully catching up." As Higgins suggests, it's not just new titles that are seeing a bump; multiple publishers told THR that back orders for already released material still available directly from the publisher scaled up in the latter half of the year, as well.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the biggest disappointments from CES 2021 going virtual will be the lack of a splashy booth by Google. Whether you cared about the company's bevy of Google Assistant-related announcements, it was hard to deny the stagecraft employed by the tech giant. From a report: For the last few years, Google boasted some of the most eye-catching CES booths, from a theme park ride in 2019 to an escape room back in January's show. Unlike other CES heavy hitters, like Samsung or LG, Google opted to place its typically massive "activations" in the parking lot in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center, suddenly making that a trendy spot to place a booth. Google's booths largely pushed the benefits of Google Assistant, underscoring the importance of the digital assistant as it scrambled to claw back market share from Amazon's Alexa, which had a head start in the area thanks to Amazon's array of Echo speakers. Indeed, Google and its Assistant were part of a battle waged over digital assistants at past CES shows, with extravagant booths and with partners announcing that their respective assistants would come embedded in a new television, car or some other gadget. But with CES going virtual, a move dictated by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, many of the show's biggest names are opting to skip the show. Google will hold partner meetings, but it won't have a large presence at the show, according to a spokesman. It's not alone -- the Consumer Technology Association said it expects about 1,000 exhibitors at the virtual show, less than a quarter of the total from the January confab.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung seems to be close to launching a new Tile-like device for tracking lost items. The tracker, likely called the Galaxy SmartTag, has been leaking out over the past month, and there's some speculation it could be announced alongside the Galaxy S21 later in January. From a report: The Galaxy SmartTag would use Bluetooth to connect with nearby devices and broadcast its location, so owners could find it later if they misplace whatever it's attached to. It'll be powered by a replaceable button cell battery, according to a regulatory filing spotted by GSMArena, so you won't have to throw it out and buy a new one when the battery dies. Samsung's tracker sounds a lot like a Tile, and it'll apparently look a lot like one, too.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new era has begun for the United Kingdom after it completed its formal separation from the European Union. From a report: The UK stopped following EU rules at 23:00 GMT, as replacement arrangements for travel, trade, immigration and security co-operation came into force. Boris Johnson said the UK had "freedom in our hands" and the ability to do things "differently and better" now the long Brexit process was over. But opponents of leaving the EU maintain the country will be worse off. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, whose ambition it is to take an independent Scotland back into the EU, tweeted: "Scotland will be back soon, Europe. Keep the light on." BBC Europe editor Katya Adler said there was a sense of relief in Brussels that the Brexit process was over, "but there is regret still at Brexit itself". The first lorries arriving at the borders entered the UK and EU without delay. On Friday evening, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tweeted that border traffic had been "low due to [the] bank holiday" but there had been no disruption in Kent as "hundreds" of lorries crossed the Channel with a "small" number turned back.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LG's got a transparent OLED display, and if you're wondering how such a device could be useful, the company has a few ideas to share. From a report: Ahead of the upcoming CES 2021 show, LG shared a few ideas on how its transparent OLED products could fit into real-world situations. One idea is having a transparent OLED at a restaurant, where the display would pop up from the bar, between the customer and the waiter, allowing the customer to see the menu and order while still being able to see the waiter. LG also designed a Smart Bed with a frame from which a transparent OLED TV can rise up, and retract to when not needed. The frame, which also features a set of speakers, can freely be moved around the house. Another example is having a 55-inch transparent OLED display at a subway train, where it replaces a traditional window. The customers could enjoy the scenery while viewing the weather forecast, the news, and information on subway lines.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A marine biologist's ideas for singling out sharks that attack humans have prompted objections from other shark scientists. From a report: The war on sharks has been waged with shock and awe at times. When a shark bit or killed a swimmer, people within the past century might take out hundreds of the marine predators to quell the panic, like executing everyone in a police lineup in order to ensure justice was dispensed on the guilty party. Eric Clua, a professor of marine biology at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, said the rationale behind shark culls in the past was simple: fewer sharks, fewer attacks. That reasoning also drives methods such as shark nets and baited hooks, which are currently in use at a number of Australian and South African beaches that are frequently visited by sharks. Nature, he notes, pays too great a price. "They are killing sharks that are guilty of nothing," said Dr. Clua, who studies the ocean predators up close in the South Pacific. Dr. Clua said he has found a way to make precision strikes on sharks that have attacked people through a form of DNA profiling he calls "biteprinting." He believes it's usually just solo "problem sharks" that attack humans repeatedly, analogizing them to terrestrial predators that have been documented behaving the same way. Instead of culling every bear, tiger or lion when only one has serially attacked people, wildlife managers on land usually focus their ire on the culprit. Dr. Clua said that problem sharks could be dispatched the same way. This summer, Dr. Clua and several colleagues published their latest paper on collecting DNA from the biteprints of large numbers of sharks. Once a database is built, DNA could be collected from the wounds of people who were bitten by sharks, and matched to a known shark. The offending fish would then need to be found and killed. Critics have taken issue with every facet of this plan.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Neda Ulaby, writing for NPR: What a year it was for Anglo-American literature and the arts! 1925 was the year of heralded novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf, seminal works by Sinclair Lewis, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Agatha Christie, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Aldous Huxley ... and a banner year for musicians, too. Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, among hundreds of others, made important recordings. And 1925 marked the release of canonical movies from silent film comedians Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. As of today, every single one of those works has entered the public domain. "That means that copyright has expired," explains Jennifer Jenkins, a law professor at Duke University who directs its Center for the Study of the Public Domain. "And all of the works are free for anyone to use, reuse, build upon for anyone -- without paying a fee."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced Thursday that it had completed the rollout of tap-to-pay scanners at all subway stations and on all of its buses throughout the city. From a report: The MTA has been installing the system, called OMNY, since May 2019 as part of a modernization effort to phase out the plastic MetroCards that have been in use since the '90s. The new tap-to-pay system is available at 472 stations and on 5,800 buses in total, the MTA said. [...] For now, you need a phone that supports NFC-based mobile payments in order to use the OMNY system. Later in 2021, the MTA will begin selling tap-to-pay cards that can be used in place of a phone -- an important addition since not all riders own a smartphone.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Logic magazine has interviewed an anonymous engineer at Amazon Web Services. An excerpt from the story, which touches a wide-range of topics including controversial work with the military and police and takes on other cloud providers: So when you use AWS, part of what you're paying for is security. Right; it's part of what we sell. Let's say a prospective customer comes to AWS. They say, "I like pay-as-you-go pricing. Tell me more about that." We say, "Okay, here's how much you can use at peak capacity. Here are the savings we can see in your case." Then the company says, "How do I know that I'm secure on AWS?" And this is where the heat turns up. This is where we get them. We say, "Well, let's take a look at what you're doing right now and see if we can offer a comparable level of security." So they tell us about the setup of their data centers. We say, "Oh my! It seems like we have level five security and your data center has level three security. Are you really comfortable staying where you are?" The customer figures, not only am I going to save money by going with AWS, I also just became aware that I'm not nearly as secure as I thought. Plus, we make it easy to migrate and difficult to leave. If you have a ton of data in your data center and you want to move it to AWS but you don't want to send it over the internet, we'll send an eighteen-wheeler to you filled with hard drives, plug it into your data center with a fiber optic cable, and then drive it across the country to us after loading it up with your data. What? How do you do that? We have a product called Snowmobile. It's a gas-guzzling truck. There are no public pictures of the inside, but it's pretty cool. It's like a modular datacenter on wheels. And customers rightly expect that if they load a truck with all their data, they want security for that truck. So there's an armed guard in it at all times. It's a pretty easy sell. If a customer looks at that option, they say, yeah, of course I want the giant truck and the guy with a gun to move my data, not some crappy system that I develop on my own.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The past 12 months were billed as the year when a flood of new entrants would force streaming services to wage an all-out war for subscribers. Instead, incumbents and rookies alike feasted on a base of shut-in customers eager for more things to watch. From a report: The largest streaming services finished 2020 with combined U.S. subscriber numbers more than 50% higher than a year ago, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from market-research firms MoffettNathanson and HarrisX. They enjoyed a captive audience. The coronavirus pandemic triggered lockdowns that sent millions of Americans home, leaving many people with more time to watch movies and shows from the couch. The virus also prompted movie theaters to shut down and sports leagues to go on hiatus for months, further boosting streaming services' appeal. "Instead of a streaming war, there's been streaming coexistence and parallel growth," said Dritan Nesho, HarrisX's chief executive. New services such as Walt Disney's Disney+ grew rapidly without necessarily harming established players such as Netflix and Hulu, he said. "Disney+ did not displace existing services," Mr. Nesho said. "It complemented them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares an analysis: See, Google Maps is not just an app on your phone. It's also a suite of developer tools that power countless other applications that are used by millions of people every day. And that part of the business is known as the Google Maps Platform (but most of the time I hear it referred to as the Google Maps API). In 2018, Google inexplicably decided to self-sabotage their enterprise maps business by raising their prices ~1,400% overnight. The only time in my life that I've ever felt envious of commission-based sales people was in the wake of that announcementâS -- âSI would have really liked to work at Mapbox as an order-taker that following quarter. Still, today, you need an MBA with a specialization in Mind Games to understand the Google Maps Platform pricing scheme, and it helps to have a joint law degree to navigate their terms of service. In fact, the ToS are so Draconian, they're the subject of investigations by the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. My favorite tidbit from their recent report, Competition in Digital Markets quotes an anonymous Google Maps Platform customer: Several developers stated that Google Maps introduced greater licensing restrictions as it gained a stronger market position. One noted that Google's control over what now serves as a key mapping technology has allowed Google to call all the shots. "We license Google Maps and it's essentially a contract of adhesion. It's full of restrictions and we aren't able to negotiate any changes," the developer said. These are the actions of an organization that is annoyed they ever let people become their customers. And for what? A few hundred million in fees, maybe? That's likely nothing compared to the billions in advertising revenue from consumers searching for the best hamburger in town. So why not jack up the prices, lock down the data, and let 'em churn, baby, churn? The trouble is, Google isn't the only game in town anymore. If they keep alienating their customers and pursuing a proprietary data strategy at all costs, they're going to continue to lose ground to competition while spending more than ever just to tread water.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few hours ago and after years of preparation, amendments to Japan's copyright law came into effect, aiming to criminalize those who download unlicensed manga, magazines, and academic texts from the Internet. From a report: While uploading pirated content has always been illegal, the new law is quite specific in that it criminalizes the downloading of unlicensed content. While that could take place in a simultaneous upload environment such as BitTorrent, it seems most likely that people will obtain content from websites instead. That presents some roadblocks to enforcement so we asked Ina how, from a technical perspective, will the authorities track, obtain evidence, and prosecute people who simply download content (comics, movies, music etc) to their machines but don't distribute? "The authorities shall use digital forensic technologies to track suspects' activities and collect evidence. The details of such technologies have not been publicly available," Masaharu Ina from Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA explained. "There are certain special units specialized in cyber crimes in each prefecture. For example, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police has its own Cyber Crime Control Unit. But the police do not investigate unless the person commits the crime repeatedly, intentionally and maliciously, i.e. innocent light downloaders shall not be prosecuted."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: According to an Amazon job listing for a contract position, the e-tailer is seeking a lead for a new Amazon Future Engineer program in India that's set to launch in 2021. "The initial research for Amazon Future Engineer in India," Amazon explains, "is currently underway and we look to the chosen candidate to dive deep into operationalizing the program to what is relevant for India and the student needs. The role involves working with local non-profits and government officials to deeply understand the needs of the students. They will utilize this research and feedback to build trust and implement a unique program addressing needs for different aged students, childhood to career. They will quickly diagnose any structural barriers with CS education policy/adoption by region, while also exercising a bias for action to get programs launched in 2021. This role will require strategic planning, ability to manage a budget and implement programs at a large scale." In its press release celebrating record-breaking holiday sales in 2020, Amazon on Monday pointed out that its Amazon Future Engineer (AFE) program more than doubled its reach in the U.S. during the pandemic and is now serving more than 5,000 schools and 550,000 students in need with computer science coursework, largely by providing access to online courses from Edhesive. Launched in 2018 with the goal of inspiring 10+ million kids each year to explore CS, Amazon explained that AFE is part of a $50 million commitment it made to CS and STEM education in 2017. Microsoft President Brad Smith later revealed in his 2019 book Tools and Weapons that the $50 million investments in CS+STEM education that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Salesforce each committed to in 2017 were part of a $300 million private sector pledge that Smith indicated was needed to get Ivanka Trump to persuade her father to fund K-12 CS; the President ultimately issued an Executive Order requiring the U.S. Dept. of Education to spend $1 billion on K-12 CS+STEM education.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech's biggest companies just wrapped up a huge year. From a report: The seven most valuable U.S. technology companies -- Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Tesla and Nvidia -- picked up a combined $3.4 trillion in market cap in 2020, powering through a global pandemic and broader economic crisis. Between continued optimism over iPhone sales, Microsoft's growing Teams collaboration product, Amazon's ongoing control of e-commerce and the strength of Google and Facebook's online ad duopoly, Big Tech was neither slowed by Covid-19 nor the rising number of investigations into its dominance. Tesla's wild rally served as the biggest surprise. The stock climbed almost ninefold this year, lifting the electric car maker's market cap from $76 billion at the beginning of the year to $669 billion at Thursday's close. Despite initial factory closures due to the pandemic, Tesla bounced back to deliver a record number of vehicles in the third quarter.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The last day of the year was also the last day for FarmVille, one of the original addictive Facebook games. From a report: FarmVille, which allowed players to cultivate colorful cartoonish farms by tending crops and caring for livestock, had 30 million daily players at its peak. But game developer Zynga announced in September it would shut down the game on Dec. 31, a victim of Adobe's decision to stop distributing and updating its Flash Player for web browsers, which in turn led Facebook to announce an end to support for Flash games on its platform.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Stock Exchange said it will delist three Chinese companies to comply with a U.S. executive order that imposed restrictions on companies that were identified as affiliated with the Chinese military. From a report: China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom Hong Kong will be delisted between Jan. 7 and Jan. 11, according to a statement by the exchange.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's drone delivery unit Wing criticized Trump administration rules issued this week mandating broadcast-based remote identification of drones, saying they should be revised to allow for internet-based tracking. From a report: On Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued rules that will allow small drones to fly over people and at night in the United States and mandate remote identification technology for nearly all drones. The rules eliminate requirements that drones, known formally as unmanned aerial vehicles, be connected to the internet to transmit location data but requires them to broadcast remote ID messages via radio frequency broadcast. "This approach creates barriers to compliance and will have unintended negative privacy impacts for businesses and consumers," Wing said Thursday in a blog post, adding "an observer tracking a drone can infer sensitive information about specific users, including where they visit, spend time, and live and where customers receive packages from and when." Wing added that "American communities would not accept this type of surveillance of their deliveries or taxi trips on the road. They should not accept it in the sky."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gazelle, one of the longest-running used smartphone buyers in the US, has announced the end of its core trade-in program, which let phone owners mail in phones and other electronics devices in exchange for cash. From a report: The news, revealed in an email Gazelle sent to some customers this week, means any prospective Gazelle customers will have to receive a quote and initiate the trade-in process by January 31st, 2021 (allowing 30 days to mail in the phone) if they want to take advantage of the program. The service will shut down officially on February 1st, while any active trade-ins will be honored, the company says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.