India's antitrust watchdog has ordered an investigation into allegations that Google has abused the dominant position of Android in the country's smart TV market. From a report: The news comes hours after the European Union opened a formal antitrust investigation into allegations that Google abuses its leading role in the advertising-technology sector. In its initial review, the Competition Commission of India, which began looking into these allegations last year, said Google had breached certain anti-competitive laws.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This may sound like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, but Canon has rolled out new AI cameras that use "smile recognition" technology to ensure that only happy employees are allowed into its offices. From a report: Back in 2020, the China-based Canon subsidiary Canon Information Technology introduced an "intelligent IT solution" for corporate offices that includes 5 different functional modules, one of which is "smiley face access control. In addition, based on the corporate culture of 'moving and always being,' Canon has always advocated the concepts of 'laughing' and 'big health,' and hopes to bring happiness and health to everyone in the post-epidemic era," Canon wrote in a press release. "Therefore, in the [...] intelligent IT solution, a new experience of smile recognition is specially incorporated. It is hoped that smiles can let everyone relax and get healthy, so as to create a more pleasant working atmosphere and improve efficiency."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft's market capitalization hit $2 trillion for the first time. GeekWire reports: The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant trails only Apple among the world's most valuable companies. Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach the $2 trillion mark in August. Fellow Seattle-area giant Amazon, valued Tuesday at $1.77 trillion, is also approaching the $2 trillion club. Microsoft stock was up 1.1% Tuesday and is up more than 20% this year. The company continues to see growing demand for its cloud services as the pandemic has accelerated technology adoption. It beat quarterly expectations with $41.7 billion in revenue for the March quarter, up 19% year-over-year -- its biggest revenue growth since 2018 -- and profits of $15.5 billion, up 44%. A Wedbush report last month projected more growth ahead for Microsoft, with Azure's cloud momentum "still in its early days" and the company "firmly positioned to gain more market share vs. AWS in this cloud arms race." Microsoft also continues to invest heavily in its gaming business; add new features to its Teams collaboration software; and is staying active in the M&A arena with its $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance Communications and reported interest in Discord and Pinterest.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: While bitcoin leaves a visible trail of transactions on its underlying blockchain, the niche "privacy coin" monero was designed to obscure the sender and receiver, as well as the amount exchanged. As a result, it has become an increasingly sought-after tool for criminals such as ransomware gangs, posing new problems for law enforcement. "We've seen ransomware groups specifically shifting to monero," said Bryce Webster-Jacobsen, director of intelligence at GroupSense, a cyber security group that has helped a growing number of victims pay out ransoms in monero. "[Cyber criminals] have recognized the ability for mistakes to be made using bitcoin that allow blockchain transactions to reveal their identity." Russia-linked REvil, the notorious ransomware group believed to be behind the attack this month on meatpacker JBS, has removed the option of paying in bitcoin this year, demanding monero only, according to Brett Callow, threat analyst at Emsisoft. Meanwhile, both DarkSide, the group blamed for the Colonial Pipeline hack, and Babuk, which was behind the attack on Washington DC police this year, allow payments in either cryptocurrency but charge a 10 to 20 percent premium to victims paying in riskier bitcoin, experts say. Justin Ehrenhofer, a cryptocurrency compliance expert and member of the monero developer community, said that at the beginning of 2020, its use by ransomware gangs was "a rounding error." Today he estimates that about 10 to 20 percent of ransoms are paid in monero and that the figure will probably rise to 50 percent by the end of the year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Iran alleges that the U.S. State Department seized the websites of some of the country's major news networks, hours after a message on several state-run Iranian news websites claimed they were "seized by the United States Government," the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network said in a statement on its website. From a report: The statement alleges the move was part of a larger-scale crackdown by the U.S. government on news websites linked to what Iran calls the 'Axis of Resistance,' which includes Syria, Hezbollah, some Iraqi militias and Hamas. The web domains, the English-language news network Press TV as well as Arabic-language channels, Al-Alam News and Al-Kawthar TV appear to have been affected according to the report.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mrflash818 writes: The Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) -- parent organization of the better-known Let's Encrypt project -- has provided prominent developer Miguel Ojeda with a one-year contract to work on Rust in Linux and other security efforts on a full-time basis. Rust is a low-level programming language offering most of the flexibility and performance of C -- the language used for kernels in Unix and Unix-like operating systems since the 1970s -- in a safer way. Efforts to make Rust a viable language for Linux kernel development began at the 2020 Linux Plumbers conference, with acceptance for the idea coming from Linus Torvalds himself. Torvalds specifically requested Rust compiler availability in the default kernel build environment to support such efforts -- not to replace the entire source code of the Linux kernel with Rust-developed equivalents, but to make it possible for new development to work properly. Using Rust for new code in the kernel -- which might mean new hardware drivers or even replacement of GNU Coreutils -- potentially decreases the number of bugs lurking in the kernel. Rust simply won't allow a developer to leak memory or create the potential for buffer overflows -- significant sources of performance and security issues in complex C-language code.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Today's announcement from SiFive comes in two parts; this part is significant as it recognizes that Intel will be enabling SiFive's IP portfolio on its 7nm manufacturing process for upcoming foundry customers. We are expecting Intel to offer a wide variety of its own IP, such as some of the x86 cores, memory controllers, PCIe controllers, and accelerators, however the depth of its third party IP support has not been fully established at this point. SiFive's IP is the first (we believe) official confirmation of specific IP that will be supported. Announced earlier this year by Pat Gelsinger, Intel Foundry Services (or IFS) is one prong of Intel's strategy to realign itself with the current and future semiconductor market. Despite having attempted to become a foundry player in the past, whereby they build chips under contract for their customers, it hasn't really worked out that well -- however IFS is a new reinvigoration of that idea, this time with more emphasis on getting it right and expanding the scope.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brave, the maker of a popular ad blocking browser, opened on Tuesday a public beta of its privacy-focused search engine, a first step in creating a product that could compete with market titan Google. From a report: Unlike other new search engines, which generally repackage results from Google and Microsoft's Bing, Brave is building an independent index of the web. (Brave Search will rely on Bing in some areas, like images, where its own results aren't yet good enough.) Initially, Brave Search won't show ads -- the chief way that Google monetizes its search results. Later, it'll offer free, ad-supported search and a paid option with no ads.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission will be the agency to review Amazon's proposed acquisition of Hollywood studio MGM, Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter, just as the commission gets a new chairwoman who has been critical of the online giant's expansion. From a report: Amazon last month announced its deal for MGM, which would boost its Prime Video streaming platform in a market that includes rivals such as Netflix and Walt Disney. MGM has a library of more than 4,000 films, including the James Bond franchise, and a TV catalog that includes "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Vikings." Companies doing sizable mergers have to submit their deals for government antitrust review. The FTC shares antitrust authority with the Justice Department, and the two agencies split up the work of reviewing proposed deals. The department has recently reviewed transactions involving video content, including Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox and AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, a deal the department unsuccessfully attempted to block in court.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bumble, the dating app where women are in charge of making the first move, has temporarily closed all of its offices this week to combat workplace stress. Its 700 staff worldwide have been told to switch off and focus on themselves. From a report: One senior executive revealed on Twitter that founder Whitney Wolfe Herd had made the move "having correctly intuited our collective burnout". Bumble has had a busier year than most firms, with a stock market debut, and rapid growth in user numbers. The company announced in April "that all Bumble employees will have a paid, fully offline one-week vacation in June". A spokeswoman for Bumble said a few customer support staff will be working in case any of the app's users experience issues. These employees will then be given time off to make sure they take a whole week of leave. The spokeswoman confirmed that the majority of Bumble's staff are taking the week off. Bumble has grown in popularity during lockdown as boredom set in and swiping to find a match picked up.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet's Google plans to shut down a long-running program aimed at entry-level engineers from underrepresented backgrounds after participants said it enforced "systemic pay inequities," according to internal correspondence seen by Reuters. From the report: Google confirmed it was replacing the Engineering Residency with a new initiative, saying it is "always evaluating programs to ensure they evolve and adapt over time to meet the needs of our employees." Google last year pledged to improve retention for underrepresented employee groups. Critics have long argued that Google and its tech industry peers favor white, Asian and male workers in hiring, promotions and pay. Companies have grown more attuned to concerns about workforce diversity since the Black Lives Matter protests a year ago. The Google residency, often referred to as "Eng Res," has since 2014 given graduates from hundreds of schools a chance to work on different teams, receive training and prove themselves for a permanent job over the course of a year. It offered a cohort of peers for bonding, three former residents said. Residents were Google's "most diverse pool" of software engineers and came "primarily from underrepresented groups," according to a June 2020 presentation and an accompanying letter to management that one source said over 500 current and former residents signed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A London-based hedge fund that suffered losses betting against US retailer GameStop during the first meme stock rally in January is shutting its doors [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: White Square Capital, run by former Paulson & Co trader Florian Kronawitter, told investors that it would shut its main fund and return capital this month after a review of its business model, according to people familiar with the fund and a letter to investors. White Square, which at its peak managed about $440m in assets, had bet against GameStop, say people familiar with its positioning, and suffered double-digit per cent losses in January. The move marks one of the first closures of a hedge fund hit by the huge surges in so-called meme stocks. Retail investors, often co-ordinating their actions on online forums such as Reddit's r/WallStreetBets and in some cases deliberately targeting hedge fund short sellers, drove up the price of stocks such as GameStop and cinema chain AMC Entertainment in January and again in recent weeks. GameStop, for instance, soared from less than $20 at the start of the year to more than $480 at its January peak. That led to big losses for some funds, including US-based Melvin Capital, run by Steve Cohen protege Gabe Plotkin, and Light Street Capital, run by Glen Kacher, a former Tiger cub who worked at Julian Robertson's Tiger Management. However, the funds remain in operation, and shortly after its losses Melvin received a $2.75bn investment from Cohen's Point72 Asset Management and Ken Griffin's Citadel. "The decision to close down is related to thinking the equity long-short model is challenged," said Kronawitter.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google was in the EU antitrust spotlight again on Tuesday as regulators opened an investigation into whether its digital advertising business gives the Alphabet unit an unfair advantage over rivals and advertisers. From a report: The European Union competition enforcer's move marks a new front against Google and follows more than 8 billion euros ($9.5 billion) in fines over the past decade for blocking rivals in online shopping, Android smartphones and online advertising. The European Commission said it would investigate whether Google distorts competition by restricting third party access to user data for advertising purposes on websites and apps, while reserving such data for its own use. "We are concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack," European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. Google generated $147 billion in revenue from online ads last year, more than any other company in the world, with ads including search, YouTube and Gmail accounting for the bulk of its overall sales and profits.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputing: The Ragnar Locker ransomware gang have published download links for more than 700GB of archived data stolen from Taiwanese memory and storage chip maker ADATA. A set of 13 archives, allegedly containing sensitive ADATA files, have been publicly available at a cloud-based storage service, at least for some time. [...] Two of the leaked archives are quite large, weighing over 100GB, but several of them that could have been easily downloaded are less than 1.1GB large. Per the file metadata published by the threat actor, the largest archive is close to 300GB and its name gives no clue about what it might contain. Another large one is 117GB in size and its name is just as nondescript as in the case of the first one (Archive#2). Judging by the names of the archives, Ragnar Locker likely stole from ADATA documents containing financial information, non-disclosure agreements, among other type of details. The ransomware attack on ADATA happened on May 23rd, 2021, forcing them to take systems offline, the company told BleepingComputer. As the Ragnar Locker leak clearly shows, ADATA did not pay the ransom and restored the affected systems on its own. The ransomware actor claims stealing 1.5TB of sensitive files before deploying the encryption routine, saying that they took their time in the process because of the poor network defenses. The recently leaked batch of archives is the second one that Ragnar Locker ransomware publishes for ADATA. The previous one was posted earlier this month and includes four small 7-zip archives (less than 250MB together) that can still be downloaded.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After six months of check-out and calibration in orbit, the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite will make its first two data streams available to the public on June 22. It launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Nov. 21, 2020, and is a U.S.-European collaboration to measure sea surface height and other key ocean features, such as ocean surface wind speed and wave height. Phys.Org reports: One of the sea surface height data streams that will be released is accurate to 2.3 inches (5.8 centimeters) and will be available within hours of when the instruments aboard Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich collect it. A second stream of data, accurate to 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters), will be released two days after collection. The difference in when the products become available balances accuracy with delivery timeliness for tasks like forecasting the weather and helping to monitor the formation of hurricanes. More datasets, which will be accurate to about 1.2 inches (2.9 centimeters), are slated for distribution later this year and are intended for research activities and climate science including tracking global mean sea level rise. The satellite, named after former NASA Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich, collects its measurements for about 90% of the world's oceans. It is one of two satellites that compose the Copernicus Sentinel-6/Jason-CS (Continuity of Service) mission. The second satellite, Sentinel-6B, is slated for launch in 2025. Together, they are the latest in a series of spacecraft starting with TOPEX/Poseidon in 1992 and continuing with the Jason series of satellites that have been gathering precise ocean height measurements for nearly 30 years. Shortly after launch, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich moved into position, trailing the current reference sea level satellite Jason-3 by 30 seconds. Scientists and engineers then spent time cross-calibrating the data collected by both satellites to ensure the continuity of measurements between the two. Once they have are assured of the data quality, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will then become the primary sea level satellite.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last Thursday, a Canadian company backed by Jeff Bezos, called General Fusion, announced it's building a nuclear fusion facility in the UK. Insider reports: General Fusion and the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) announced the project together, which will see General Fusion build a fusion demonstration plant in the village of Culham, near Oxford. The facility will be a proof-of-concept, allowing General Fusion to demonstrate its Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology before going on to build its first commercial facility. According to General Fusion, construction will begin in 2022, and it is expected to be about three years before the plant is able to open. "This new plant by General Fusion is a huge boost for our plans to develop a fusion industry in the UK, and I'm thrilled that Culham will be home to such a cutting-edge and potentially transformative project," the UK science minister, Amanda Solloway, said in a statement. The BBC reports Bezos has been an investor in General Fusion for over a decade, and the company raised $100 million in its latest funding round.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: From espresso to instant, coffee is part of the daily routine for millions. Now research suggests the brew could be linked to a lower chance of developing or dying from chronic liver disease. Chronic liver disease is a major health problem around the world. According to the British Liver Trust, liver disease is the third leading cause of premature death in the UK, with deaths having risen 400% since 1970. Writing in the journal BMC Public Health, Roderick and colleagues report how they analyzed data from 494,585 participants in the UK Biobank -- a project designed to help unpick the genetic and environmental factors associated with particular conditions. All participants were aged 40 to 69 when they signed up to the project, with 384,818 saying they were coffee drinkers at the outset compared with 109,767 who did not consume the beverage. The team looked at the liver health of the participants over a median period of almost 11 years, finding 3,600 cases of chronic liver disease, with 301 deaths, and 1,839 cases of simple fatty liver disease. The analysis revealed that after taking into account factors such as body mass index, alcohol consumption, and smoking status, those who drank any amount of coffee, and of any sort, had a 20% lower risk of developing chronic liver disease or fatty liver disease (taken together) than those who did not consume the brew. The coffee drinkers also had a 49% lower risk of dying from chronic liver disease. The team said the magnitude of the effect increased with the amount of coffee consumed, up to about three to four cups a day, "beyond which further increases in consumption provided no additional benefit." A reduction in risk was also found when instant, decaffeinated and ground coffee were considered separately -- although the latter linked to the largest effect.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, and leaker Jon Prosser say Apple is working on a completely new, high-end version of the MacBook Air. MacRumors reports: The high-end MacBook Air will feature two USB-C ports and a more powerful Apple silicon chip, according to Gurman. The chip will apparently be a direct successor to Apple's M1 chip, featuring the same number of computing cores, but it will run faster. It is also expected to see an increase in graphics cores from seven or eight to nine or 10. This high-end MacBook Air would sit above the current MacBook Air models with the M1 chip, but below the MacBook Pro. Prosser recently unveiled renders that purport to depict the next-generation MacBook Air based on leaked images. Prosser says that the MacBook Air will be available in a range of color options, much like the 24-inch iMac, and will feature larger function keys, a smaller trackpad, and redesigned feet on the underside of the machine. The biggest change in terms of design from the current MacBook Air seems to be the loss of its iconic tapered design. Instead, the MacBook Air will become considerably thinner as a whole, Prosser explained. Other features rumored to be coming to next-generation MacBook Air models include a mini-LED display and a MagSafe charging port. Gurman believes that the high-end MacBook Air could launch in the second half of this year at the earliest or in 2022, a timeframe that has been echoed by Prosser.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hardware engineer Zhi Hui Jun built a bicycle that avoids obstacles and self-balances. Interesting Engineering reports: The engineer, who worked on the bicycle project in his spare time over the course of four months, crafted a self-balancing bicycle using an accelerometer and gyroscope sensors that allow the bike's front wheel to compensate and quickly change direction if it's going to fall. The system generates just the right amount of angular momentum in the right direction to stop the bike from falling. Impressively, the bike's motion, as seen in Zhi Jui Jun's video is actually quite smooth, and it doesn't look like it provides the janky ride we expected on first hearing about the project -- the almost imperceptible changes made to the bike's balance make it feel like it's being ridden by a ghost. For the obstacle detection and avoidance system, Zhi Hui Jin designed an automatic control system -- that uses a customized perception and control algorithm -- that he linked to the sensors and a chip. Zhi Hui Jun used 3D printing and machine tool processing to craft some of the required parts for his bicycle. As well as the accelerometer and gyroscope, the bicycle is equipped with two brushless motors and a steering gear, as well as an RGBD depth camera, and a LiDAR sensor -- as used by driverless cars to detect their surroundings. The bicycle also uses 6S model power lithium battery, which has approximately three hours of battery life.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boston Dynamics has been purchased by Hyundai in a deal valued at $1.1 billion. According to Motherboard, the deal "sees Hyundai assume an 80 percent controlling stake in the robot company. Softbank will retain a 20 percent stake." From the report: It is hard to tell what Hyundai wants out of Boston Dynamics from the press release, which is laden with technobabble. Robots in car manufacturing are nothing new, but Hyundai says the acquisition is "another major step toward its strategic transformation into a Smart Mobility Solution Provider" such as "autonomous driving, artificial intelligence (AI), Urban Air Mobility (UAM), smart factories and robots," which seems to speak to the company's ambitions beyond car manufacturing. Hyundai says it hopes to "develop advanced technologies that enhance people's lives and promote safety, thereby realizing the progress for humanity." Apparently, the "progress of humanity" means a lot less of it. To celebrate the purchase, Hyundai released a bizarre hype video featuring a seeing-eye robot dog, a nurse robot dog with a tablet mounted on its head that allows the patient to nod at a doctor who is somewhere else, and a teen dancing with a robot in the street. In other words, Hyundai envisions a lonely future in which social cohesion between humans has broken down and robots are our only friends. That's all bad enough, but why anyone would want a seeing eye robot dog instead of a real dog is beyond comprehension.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.