Shameless Plug

Apple Aims To Prevent Defections To Meta With Rare $180,000 Bonuses for Top Talent Published on December 29, 2021 at 02:55AM Apple has issued unusual and significant stock bonuses to some engineers in an effort to retain talent, looking to stave off defections to tech rivals such as Facebook owner Meta Platforms. From a report: Last week, the company informed some engineers in silicon design, hardware, and select software and operations groups of the out-of-cycle bonuses, which are being issued as restricted stock units, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The shares vest over four years, providing an incentive to stay at the iPhone maker. The bonuses, which came as a surprise to those who received them, have ranged from about $50,000 to as much as $180,000 in some cases. Many of the engineers received amounts of roughly $80,000, $100,000 or $120,000 in shares, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the program isn't public. The perk was presented b...

Japan Aims To Put a Person on the Moon by Late 2020s Published on December 29, 2021 at 02:13AM Japan revised the schedule of its space exploration plans on Tuesday, aiming to put a Japanese person on the moon by the latter half of the 2020s. From a report: "Not only is space a frontier that gives people hopes and dreams but it also provides a crucial foundation to our economic society with respect to our economic security," Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a meeting to finalise the plan. According to the draft schedule of the plan, Japan aims to put the first non-American on the moon as part of the Artemis programme, a U.S.-led initiative that aims to return astronauts to the moon. The plan also spells out Japan's aspirations to launch a probe to explore Mars in 2024, as well as to find ways to generate solar electricity in space. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LastPass Says It Didn't Leak Your Password Published on December 29, 2021 at 01:24AM Did LastPass get hacked? Gizmodo: Some users of the popular password manager recently received emails from the company warning them of suspicious login attempts that were utilizing their master password -- definitely never a great sign. Speculation soon spread that LastPass may have suffered a data breach that exposed users' credentials, thus allowing for the malicious activity to take place. According to LastPass itself, the answer is: We don't think so. When reached for comment by Gizmodo, the company provided us with a statement blaming the irregular activity on "credential stuffing" attempts by some unknown threat actor: "LastPass investigated recent reports of blocked login attempts and we believe the activity is related to attempted 'credential stuffing' activity, in which a malicious or bad actor attempts to access user accounts (in this case, LastPass) using...

Winter Storms Are Breaking Snow and Temperature Records Published on December 29, 2021 at 12:54AM Winter storms sweeping parts of the Western U.S. and the Pacific Northwest have brought heavy snow and record low temperatures in some areas -- and there's more to come. From a report: A winter storm warning continues into Wednesday for parts of the border area of Northern California and Nevada. "We've had quite a series of storms that have impacted the area, especially impacted the Sierra, where we've had some very heavy snow amounts. That's impacted travel to an incredible degree," National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Kurth told The Associated Press. Snow showers blew in from the Gulf of Alaska and blanketed parts of Washington and Oregon, where state officials have declared an emergency. The Seattle area got up to 6 inches of snow. Weather shelters were opened in both Seattle and Portland. The NWS said Seattle's low of 20 degrees on Sunday broke th...

Tumblr Goes Overboard Censoring Tags on iOS To Comply With Apple's Guidelines Published on December 29, 2021 at 12:28AM An update to Tumblr's iOS app censors a long list of tags to comply with Apple's strict safety guidelines. From a report: The platform explains that it's changing iOS users' ability to access sensitive content, affecting their experience when it comes to searching for content, scrolling through the "Stuff for You" and "Following" sections of the dashboard, and could even prevent access to blogs that are flagged. Tumblr says it has to "extend the definition of what sensitive content is" to "remain available within Apple's App Store," and it seems that Tumblr stretched it pretty far. Tags are what make posts searchable on Tumblr; posts with censored tags won't appear on a users' dashboard, nor will they show up on the platform's search page. A Twitter thread brought attention to some of the ab...

'Widevine Dump': Leaked Code Downloads HD Video From Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix Published on December 28, 2021 at 05:32AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A GitHub user who goes by the name "Widevinedump" has published several repositories that allow people to download HD video from popular streaming platforms, including Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix. The code appears to be the real deal but the 'free' use is fairly limited and may not be very secure either. [...] TorrentFreak spoke to a source who confirmed that these scrips are indeed the real deal. That said, they appear to be relatively old pieces of code that may not be the most secure. Using these tools could get someone banned by a streaming platform, or perhaps worse. There is another major issue that raises suspicion. Most of the download tools don't come with the Content Decryption Module (CDM) that's included to download 4K content. To gain access to that, people are...

Big Tech Split Leads To Demise of Internet Association Published on December 28, 2021 at 03:32AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Growing tensions between Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Apple lie behind the death of the Internet Association (IA), the nine-year-old lobby group that was Big Tech's voice in Washington, according to insiders and industry observers. The Washington-based group, which dubbed itself the "unified" voice of the internet industry, will shut at the end of the year after both Microsoft and Uber, among others, pulled their financial support, leaving an insurmountable funding gap. "Our industry has undergone tremendous growth and change," it said in a statement, adding that its closure was "in line with this evolution." The closure is a sign of the increasingly different policy objectives of its Big Tech members, said observers, with Microsoft in particular looking to distance itself from its Si...