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ICANN Halts $1.1 Billion Sale of .Org Registry Published on May 01, 2020 at 10:30AM Charlotte Web shares a report from The Register: ICANN has halted the proposed $1.1 billion sale of the .org registry to an unknown private equity firm, claiming this was "the right thing to do." The DNS overseer has been under growing pressure to use its authority to refuse the planned transfer of the top-level domain from the Internet Society to Ethos Capital, most recently from the California Attorney General who said the deal "puts profits above the public interest." ICANN ultimately bowed to the US state's top lawyer when it concluded today it "finds the public interest is better served in withholding consent." It gave several factors, all of which were highlighted by Attorney General Xavier Becerra as reasons to reject it: the fact that the sale would see the registry -- which has long served non-profit organizations -- turn from a non-profit itself into a for-p...

FDA Authorizes NASA-Developed Ventilator For Use In COVID-19 Treatment Published on May 01, 2020 at 09:00AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized for emergency use as outlined in the agency's COVID-19 guidelines a new ventilator designed by engineers working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The ventilator, which has an acronym because this is NASA we're talking about, is called "VITAL" (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally), and its design is being offered for free, licensed use for the duration of the coronavirus crisis. The JPL-developed emergency use ventilator is an intubation ventilator, meaning that a patient has to be sedated, with a breathing tube inserted all the way down their airway to assist their breathing. It's reserved for COVID-19 patients exhibiting the most serious symptoms, and even then is really designed for use only to free up availability of ...

Xiaomi Found Recording 'Private' Web and Phone Use, Researchers Claim Published on May 01, 2020 at 07:30AM According to an exclusive report from Forbes, cybersecurity researcher Gabi Cirlig discovered that his Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 smartphone was watching much of what he was doing and sending that data to remote servers hosted by Chinese tech giant Alibaba, which were ostensibly rented by Xiaomi. From the report: The seasoned cybersecurity researcher found a worrying amount of his behavior was being tracked, whilst various kinds of device data were also being harvested, leaving Cirlig spooked that his identity and his private life was being exposed to the Chinese company. When he looked around the Web on the device's default Xiaomi browser, it recorded all the websites he visited, including search engine queries whether with Google or the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo, and every item viewed on a news feed feature of the Xiaomi software. That tracking appeared to be happening e...

Intel Unveils 10th Gen 'Comet Lake' CPUs, Pricing Published on May 01, 2020 at 07:00AM UnknowingFool writes: Intel released more information about their next generation CPUs, codenamed Comet Lake. Overall, CPUs will get more cores and threads and slight speed boosts. Price wise, Intel is cutting prices to be more competitive with AMD's Rzyen processors. Some of the downsides include requiring new socket (thus new MBs), LGA 1200 and lack of PCIE 4.0 compatibility. No specific benchmarks were released, however Intel claims to have the fastest gaming CPUs. "[T]he top Comet Lake chip is the same price as the top Coffee Lake at $488, and the cheapest Core i3 is $122," reports PC Gamer. They expect the release date to be sometime in May, though no official date has been confirmed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

USB 4 Will Fully Support DisplayPort 2, Including 8K HDR Monitors Published on May 01, 2020 at 06:30AM VESA has announced that USB 4 will fully support the massive bandwidth available for the DisplayPort 2.0 standard, including support for 8K 60Hz HDR or even 16K 60Hz monitors. Engadget reports: Since USB 4 works at 40Gbps and DisplayPort 2.0 supports 80Gbps speeds, how will this work? USB 4 can actually send and receive at 40Gbps at the same time, so VESA took advantage of that with a new spec called DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0. Since DisplayPort is primarily used for video, which only sends data one way from your PC to a monitor, the Alt Mode 2.0 standard remaps USB-C's data pins to work in one direction only -- giving you double the speeds. According to Anandtech, Alt Mode 2.0 will support regular USB 4 cables. At the same time, monitors won't need to have USB 4 controllers, which should simplify display designs. Since it also supports the Thunderbolt 3 standard, USB 4 will b...

Quibi, JetBlue and Others Gave Away Email Addresses, Report Says Published on May 01, 2020 at 05:50AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Millions of people gave their email addresses to Quibi, JetBlue, Wish and other companies (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) -- and those email addresses got away. They ended up in the hands of advertising and analytics companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter, leaving the people with those email addresses more easily targeted by advertisers and able to be tracked by companies that study shopping behavior, according toa reportpublished on Wednesday. The customers unwittingly exposed their email addresses when signing up for apps or clicking on links in marketing emails, said the researcher Zach Edwards, who runs the digital strategy firm Victory Medium. In the report, he described the giveaway of personal data as part of a "sloppy and dangerous growth hack." Mr. Edwards, a contributor to a r...

Fox News Breaking News Alert Strzok had stopped FBI from ending Flynn probe despite lack of 'derogatory' evidence, documents show 04/30/20 12:36 PM

Trump's Disinfectant Talk Trips Up Sites' Vows Against Misinformation Published on May 01, 2020 at 01:10AM Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said in March that promoting bleach as a cure for the coronavirus was "misinformation that has imminent risk of danger" and that such messages would immediately be removed from the social network. President Trump has now put Mr. Zuckerberg's comments to the test. From a report: At a White House briefing last week, Mr. Trump suggested that disinfectants and ultraviolet light were possible treatments for the virus. His remarks immediately found their way onto Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites, and people rushed to defend the president's statements as well as mock them. But Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have declined to remove Mr. Trump's statements posted online in video clips and transcriptions of the briefing, saying he did not specifically direct people to pursue the unproven treatment...

Amazon To Cut Price of its Ebooks in UK To Reflect Removal of VAT Published on May 01, 2020 at 12:52AM Amazon has confirmed it will cut the price of its Kindle ebooks from Friday, after the government announced it would bring forward plans to stop charging VAT on online publications because of the pandemic. From a report: The decision to remove the 20% VAT charged on online news subscriptions and books will bring them in line with their physical equivalents, which have always been zero-rated. Amazon said customers would very shortly start to notice the change, which will see the cost a $12.6 ebook reduced to $10.5. "For titles where Amazon sets the price, we will reduce the prices of books not already on promotion," said a spokesperson. "After receiving today's notification, we are working as fast as possible to lower prices for customers." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft's Visual Studio Online Code Editor is Now Visual Studio Codespaces and Gets a Price Drop Published on May 01, 2020 at 12:31AM About a year ago, Microsoft launched Visual Studio Online, its online code editor based on the popular Visual Studio Code project. Itâ(TM)s basically a full code editor and hosted environment that lives in your browser. Today, the company announced that it is changing the name of this service to Visual Studio Codespaces. It's also dropping the price of the service by more than 50% and giving developers the option to run it on relatively low-performance virtual machines that will start at $0.08 per hour. In today's announcement, Microsoft's Scott Hanselman points out that the company learned that most developers who used Visual Studio Online thought of it as being much more than simply an editor in the browser. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you’ve been having trouble unlocking your pesky iPhone while wearing a mask, you’re not alone. As many of us are wearing facial coverings while out of the house to curb the spread of COVID-19 , it’s proving difficult to use the Face ID unlocking feature in newer iPhones, like the iPhone 11 . Luckily, an upcoming software update from Apple is making it easier to deal with the frustration, though not in the way you might think. Among various bug fixes and improvements, Apple’s upcoming iOS 13.5 update includes a minor but important change to the iPhone lock screen. When you pick up a Face ID-capable iPhone, it usually prompts you to show your mug to the front-facing camera to get inside your device. Failing that, the iPhone asks you to enter your passcode — but it can take a few seconds before the passcode option appears. With the upcoming update, iPhone users will be able to swipe up from the bottom of the lock screen to instantly jump to to the passcode option, man...

NASA has selected three U.S. companies to design and develop human landing systems (HLS) for the agency’s Artemis program, one of which will land the first woman and next man on the surface of the Moon by 2024. April 30, 2020 from NASA https://ift.tt/3cWkwvg

This Tech Conference Is Being Held on an Animal Crossing Island Published on April 30, 2020 at 10:28PM As our lives have become a seemingly endless series of work meetings on Zoom and FaceTime or WhatsApp catch-ups with friends, we're all getting a bit sick of seeing people's faces enclosed in a cold, almost lifeless, digital frame. A tech worker from New York had a different idea for his tech conference, which he announced, in all seriousness, on April Fools' Day. The free conference is called Deserted Island DevOps and is happening on Thursday, entirely inside Animal Crossing, the Nintendo Switch hit game released in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. From a report: Speakers are doing their talks on an island in Animal Crossing specifically built for the conference, and attendees can follow along in the game, on Twitch, or Zoom, as a fallback option. Other than the unusual, and incredibly colorful and fun setting, the conference is very much like any other conferenc...

Glowing Blue Waves Lighting Up SoCal Coastline Roll Into the South Bay Published on April 30, 2020 at 09:48PM Crashing waves emitting a flash of neon blue have lit up darkened stretches of Southern California's coastline this month, most recently making an appearance in the South Bay. From a report: The sporadic phenomenon -- sometimes called sea sparkle -- is something scientists have been studying for 120 years. It's associated with a red tide, or an algae bloom, made up of organisms called dinoflagellates. These tiny single-celled organisms are common members of the coastal plankton community that float on or near the ocean's surface and can emit bioluminescence, most commonly when they're grabbed by a predator. The light acts to startle their attacker, according to Michael Latz, a marine biologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Occasionally, the organisms are found in high concentrations, resulting in red tides and known for giving t...

Raspberry Pi Gains a New 12.3-Megapixel Camera and Interchangeable Lenses Published on April 30, 2020 at 09:24PM The Raspberry Pi can be used for all sorts of maker projects, and the foundation has offered camera modules for it since 2013, adding vision-related functionality. The first module was a modest 5-megapixel affair that was eventually replaced by an 8-megapixel Sony sensor four years ago. Today, sees the arrival of a new much higher 12.3 megapixel quality camera, and a range of interchangeable lenses. From a report: The new camera is compatible with all Raspberry Pi models -- from Pi 1 Model B onwards -- with the exception of early Pi Zero boards. The camera is available to buy from today for $50. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fox News Breaking News Alert Intel boss confirms investigation into coronavirus, ‘accident’ at Wuhan lab 04/30/20 8:25 AM

No Nintendo Direct Planned for June Due To Work-From-Home Hurdles Published on April 30, 2020 at 08:17PM Nintendo is telling partner developers it's not going to hold one of its Nintendo Direct video events in June. From a report: The publisher has had a June Direct to correspond with E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) every year since 2013. And before that, it held annual stage presentations. But complications brought about from Japan's work-from-home order as part of its attempts to mitigate COVID-19 are forcing Nintendo to push back its schedule. Nintendo was putting together a June event. The company was lining up partners and was planning to unveil its first-party schedule for the rest of 2020. That included highlighting the Mario franchise's 35th anniversary, which it's going to celebrate with the release of some classic 3D Mario games on Switch, according to various reports. But now, the company is far less certain. If it holds another Direct, it may not come u...

NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) are inviting coders, entrepreneurs, scientists, designers, storytellers, makers, builders, artists, and technologists to participate in a virtual hackathon May 30-31 dedicated to putting open data to work in developing solutions to issues related to the COVID-19 pandemi April 30, 2020 from NASA https://ift.tt/2YkB2RC

Dark matter, although invisible, makes up most of the universe’s mass and creates its underlying structure. via NASA https://ift.tt/35i4vgE

Zoom Admits it Doesn't Have 300 Million Users, Corrects Misleading Claims Published on April 30, 2020 at 07:40PM Zoom has admitted it doesn't have 300 million daily active users. From a report: The admission came after The Verge noticed the company had quietly edited a blog post making the claim earlier this month. Zoom originally stated it had "more than 300 million daily users" and that "more than 300 million people around the world are using Zoom during this challenging time." Zoom later deleted these references from the original blog post, and now claims "300 million daily Zoom meeting participants." The difference between a daily active user (DAU) and "meeting participant" is significant. Daily meeting participants can be counted multiple times: if you have five Zoom meetings in a day then you're counted five times. A DAU is counted once per day, and is commonly used by companies to measure service usage. Only counting meeting ...

ARM is expanding access to its chip designs to startups that have raised less than $5 million through its Flexible Access program . Kevin and I explain why this is a big deal and then go on to discuss a new gesture-based interface that could be either a gimmick or a gamechanger. From there we talk about the pandemic delaying Ford’s self-driving car plans , the closure of PetNet , and the acquisition of a smart ring by a digital key card company. Plus, we cover a robot for kids , AR contact lenses , a Google AI muddle, Google Assistant getting router controls , and a new satellite network for the IoT . We also review the Google Pixel Buds 2 and Kevin talks about his experience with the Blink Mini camera . We end by answering a question about choosing smart home devices based on your digital assistant. The Moxie robot from Embodied will start shipping in October. Image courtesy of Embodied. Our guest this week is Alex Capecelatro, CEO of Josh.ai , which makes a voice platform for ...

Fox News Breaking News Alert EXCLUSIVE: Biden has long-standing, close ties to University of Delaware trustees controlling the Senate papers his critics want 04/30/20 3:04 AM

Hubble Captures Breakup of Comet ATLAS Published on April 30, 2020 at 03:30PM The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the breakup of Comet ATLAS, a.k.a. C/2019 Y4. "The telescope resolved roughly 30 fragments of the fragile comet on April 20 and 25 pieces on April 23," reports Phys.Org. From the report: The Hubble Space Telescope's new observations of the comet's breakup on April 20 and 23 reveal that the broken fragments are all enveloped in a sunlight-swept tail of cometary dust. These images provide further evidence that comet fragmentation is probably common and might even be the dominant mechanism by which the solid, icy nuclei of comets die. [...] Because comet fragmentation happens quickly and unpredictably, reliable observations are rare. Therefore, astronomers remain largely uncertain about the cause of fragmentation. One suggestion is that the original nucleus spins itself into pieces because of the jet action of outgassing from sublimating ices. As this v...

AMC Theaters Will No Longer Play Universal Movies After Trolls World Tour's On-Demand Success Published on April 30, 2020 at 12:30PM stikves writes: Given the highly-successful video on demand release of the recent "Trolls World Tour" movie, and the future plans to sidestep theaters for some content from Universal, AMC has struck back by blanket banning of all their content. "As a result, [NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell] noted that as 'soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats,' meaning some movies would continue with theatrical releases while others would go directly to digital retailers or possibly land on NBCUniversal's new streaming service, Peacock," reports The Verge. "The move led to a lengthy statement from AMC Theatres chair-CEO Adam Aron, who claimed that Shell's comments were 'unacceptable.' 'It is disappointing to us, but Jeff's comments as to Universal's unilateral actions and intent...

Fox News Breaking News Alert Newsom to close all California beaches in crackdown: report 04/29/20 9:32 PM

Scientists Create Glowing Plants Using Mushroom Genes Published on April 30, 2020 at 09:00AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Emitting an eerie green glow, they look like foliage from a retro computer game, but in fact they are light-emitting plants produced in a laboratory. Researchers say the glowing greenery could not only add an unusual dimension to home decor but also open up a fresh way for scientists to explore the inner workings of plants. "In the future this technology can be used to visualize activities of different hormones inside the plants over the lifetime of the plant in different tissues, absolutely non-invasively. It can also be used to monitor plant responses to various stresses and changes in the environment, such as drought or wounding by herbivores," said Dr Karen Sarkisyan, the CEO of Planta, the startup that led the work, and a researcher at Imperial College London. "We really hope to bring this to the market in a few years ...

Fairphone 3 Now Available With 'de-Googled' Android /e/OS Published on April 30, 2020 at 06:55AM joestar writes: Fairphone, the European manufacturer of mobile phones with a reduced environmental impact, has announced a partnership to offer /e/OS, the most "de-Googled" and pro-privacy Android OS, on their latest model Fairphone 3. An interesting move that reminds me of the recent introduction of the Google-free Huawei Mate 30. A pithy explainer of its "privacy by design ecosystem" -- and the point of "Android without Google" -- further notes: "We have removed many pieces of code that send your personal data to remote servers without your consent. We don't scan your data in your phone or in your cloud space, and we don't track your location a hundred times a day or collect what you're doing with your apps." According to TechCrunch, the e/OS variant of the Firephone 3 ships from May 6, priced at just under 480 euros -- "a...

Toshiba Publishes Full List of Its Drives Using Slower SMR Technology Published on April 30, 2020 at 06:15AM "Toshiba has just published a full list of all the consumer HDDs in their lineup that use SMR (shingled magnetic recording) technology," writes Slashdot reader williamyf. "This comes after the whole submarine consumer SMR HDDs fiasco, and fresh on the heels of Western Digital publishing a full list of all their consumer HDDs using SMR. With this, Seagate is the only HDD vendor which has not yet published a full list of their consumer HDDs using SMR." Blocks and Files reports: Toshiba uses SMR technology -- previously undocumented -- in several desktop drives and in some video surveillance HDDs: P300 6TB, P300 4TB, DT02 6TB, DT02 4TB, DT02-V 6TB and DT02-V 4TB. Certain notebook PC, game consoles, and external consumer drives also use SMR: L200 2TB, L200 1TB, MQ04 2TB and MQ04 1TB. The company does not use SMR in the N300, a NAS drive intended for the consume...

Google Is Killing Its Experimental Social Network Shoelace Published on April 30, 2020 at 05:33AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Google's experimental Area 120 unit launched Shoelace in mid-2019 as a way to help people get together in real life. Unfortunately, the fledgling social network won't make it out of the experimental phase -- the tech giant has announced that Shoelace is shutting down on May 12th. The service was geared towards people looking for group activities with other locals who share the same interests. Say, people interested in photography who want to meet up for a shoot or those looking for buddies to see concerts with. It was only ever available for iOS users in NYC, though, and never quite made its way to other regions. Based on the team's announcement on its website, the app fell victim to the coronavirus pandemic. Area 120 says it doesn't feel like it's the right time to invest further in the project "given the curren...

Trump Administration Lists Some of Amazon's Foreign Websites as 'Notorious' Counterfeit Markets Published on April 30, 2020 at 01:30AM The Trump administration Wednesday included Amazon's foreign websites in Canada, the U.K., Germany, France and India in its annual report on "notorious markets" for counterfeit foreign goods, the first time a U.S. company's overseas operations have been listed. From a report: The inclusion does not carry any penalty, other than the embarrassment for Amazon of being listed alongside other websites and physical markets where counterfeit goods are sold. But the Seattle-based e-commerce giant said it strongly disagreed with the action, accusing the Trump administration of ignoring its efforts to make sure only legitimate products are sold on its website. "This purely political act is another example of the administration using the U.S. government to advance a personal vendetta against Amazon," a company spokesperson...

Lenovo Will Start Offering ThinkPads With Linux Pre-Installed Published on April 30, 2020 at 12:50AM The world's biggest PC company (in terms of shipments) now offers select models with Linux pre-installed. In doing so, it joins the existing club that includes Dell and other smaller players like Purism, ZaReason, and System76. From a report: If Linux has a special place in your heart, you will want to know Lenovo is partnering with the Fedora Project to give you your dream machine in the form of ThinkPad laptops that make it easy even for a newcomer to get started with Fedora. This is supposed to be a pilot program dubbed Linux Community Series -- Fedora Edition, which will include the ThinkPad P1 Gen2, ThinkPad X1 Gen8, ThinkPad P53, with the possibility that the company will expand the selection in the near future if it sees enough demand. These models will come with the newly released Fedora 32 Workstation Linux pre-installed, and will presumably be certified to play nice with...

Canon's New Software Will Turn Select EOS, PowerShot Cameras Into Webcams for Windows 10 PCs Published on April 29, 2020 at 11:46PM An anonymous reader shares a report: As more and more people desire higher-quality video communication over internet while working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for webcams has increased dramatically, triggering incredibly high prices, sometimes three to four times over MSRP. And that's if you can find one at all. To help bridge a growing gap, Canon has announced the release of the EOS Webcam Utility Beta, a program for that will, with a single USB cable, turn compatible Canon EOS interchangeable lens cameras (ILCs) and PowerShot cameras into dedicated webcams on PCs running the 64-bit version of Windows 10. "In unprecedented times, it's imperative for Canon to provide our customers with useful, simple and accessible solutions to assist them in whatever imaging needs they have," said Tatsuro Kano, executive vice...

Amazon To Get Exclusive NFL Games as Part of New Streaming Deal Published on April 29, 2020 at 11:32PM The National Football League is giving Amazon exclusive rights to live games for the first time, marking a deeper push by streaming services into sports. From a report: The league announced Wednesday that it would select a Saturday game in the coming season and give Amazon the sole rights to show it outside of the two teams' home markets. The NFL schedules a handful of Saturday games late in its season, when college football's regular season is over. Amazon will also have an exclusive game in 2021 and 2022. It's part of a new three-year extension of the Thursday-night partnership between the tech giant and the world's richest sports league. Amazon and its Twitch platform will continue to have nonexclusive rights to 11 Thursday-night games a season through 2022. Those games, which are also televised on Fox and the NFL Network, will be available to Amazon Prime subscri...