Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft recently rejected a California law enforcement agency's request to install facial recognition technology in officers' cars and body cameras due to human rights concerns, company President Brad Smith said on Tuesday. Microsoft concluded it would lead to innocent women and minorities being disproportionately held for questioning because the artificial intelligence has been trained on mostly white and male pictures. AI has more cases of mistaken identity with women and minorities, multiple research projects have found.

On the other hand, Microsoft did agree to provide the technology to an American prison, after the company concluded that the environment would be limited and that it would improve safety inside the unnamed institution. Smith explained the decisions as part of a commitment to human rights that he said was increasingly critical as rapid technological advances empower governments to conduct blanket surveillance, deploy autonomous weapons and take other steps that might prove impossible to reverse. Smith also said at a Stanford University conference that Microsoft had declined a deal to install facial recognition on cameras blanketing the capital city of an unnamed country that the nonprofit Freedom House had deemed not free. Smith said it would have suppressed freedom of assembly there.

Volkswagen will use Chinese software developers to help design a global autonomous vehicle architecture thanks to the prevalence of qualified programmers which carmakers are struggling to hire elsewhere, senior executives said on Monday. Reuters reports: As carmakers scramble to develop advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving functions, carmakers are struggling to find qualified engineers to build the software algorithms needed to teach cars the right reflexes. Volkswagen has 4,000 engineers in China, with an average age of 29, spread over five research and development sites and a rapidly growing number of software engineers. "In a short period from now they will be able to do 15 to 20 million lines of programming code on an annual basis," Volkswagen China's passenger cars chief Stephan Woellenstein said in Shanghai on Monday.

The prevalence of software engineers, combined with the country's willingness to roll out the infrastructure for connected and self-driving cars, will make China one of the first markets in which autonomous cars gain widespread acceptance, VW managers said. As a result, Chinese suppliers will help Volkswagen Group to design a global autonomous vehicle architecture, he said.

A herd of dairy cows in the U.K. "are enjoying the benefits of 5G connectivity before you," reports Reuters: For the cows, among the 5G-connected gadgets they are wearing is a collar that controls a robotic milking system. When the cow feels ready to be milked it will approach machine gates that will automatically open. The device recognizes the individual to precisely latch on to its teats for milking, while the cow munches on a food reward. At the government-funded Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation Centre (Agri-EPI Centre) in Shepton Mallet, in southwest England, around 50 of the 180-strong herd is fitted with the 5G smart collars and health-monitoring ear tags.
But -- why?! The Verge explains: According to Reuters, Cisco is testing infrastructure for the eventual global rollout of 5G that could be used by various industries that are not traditionally in the tech bubble but are still dependent on increasingly sophisticated hardware and software. That includes farming. In this case, Cisco is trying out 5G in three rural locations...

It makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it: farms are large and spread-out spaces, and cows are often shuffled between grazing grounds and areas of the farm where they can be more easily milked and checked on. With the 5G collars, Cisco says farmers can keep tabs on the animals at all times of the day without having to physically trek out to observe the cows up close... The future is wonderful and weird, and farmers have access to it before you and I because without them, we all starve.

"We can connect every cow, we can connect every animal on this farm," Cisco's Nick Chrissos told Reuters, in what may be the strangest boast a Cisco executive has ever uttered in public. "That's what 5G can do for farming -- really unleash the power that we have within this farm, everywhere around the UK and everywhere around the world."

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Richard Liu, the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com Inc, has weighed in on an ongoing debate about the Chinese tech industry's grueling overtime work culture, lamenting that years of growth had increased the number of "slackers" in his firm who are not his "brothers...." Liu, who started the company that would become JD.com in 1998, in the note spoke about how in the firm's earliest days he would set his alarm clock to wake him up every two hours to ensure he could offer his customers 24-hour service -- a step he said was crucial to JD's success...

The '996' work schedule, which refers to a 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. workday, six days a week, has in particular become the target of online debate and protests on some coding platforms, where workers have swapped examples of excessive overtime demands at some firms. Liu said JD did not force its staff to work the "996" or even a "995" overtime schedule. "But every person must have the desire to push oneself to the limit!" he said.
JD disputed reports that the company would be cutting up to 8% of its workforce, but did say "We're getting back to those roots as we seek, develop and reward staff who share the same hunger and values... JD.com is a competitive workplace that rewards initiative and hard work, which is consistent with our entrepreneurial roots."

JD's investors include Walmart and Google.

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: China's largest stock images provider, Visual China Group, shut its website and apologized on Friday after it falsely claimed copyright of images such as the first photo of a black hole and China's national flag. The company, which partners with U.S. photo agency Getty Images, said in a post on its official Weibo account the incident revealed its weak management and that it was cooperating with authorities investigating the matter. Shares in the company slumped by the maximum 10 percent allowed. The topic "Visual China apologises" was among the most-read items on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform on Friday, with over 250 million views...

The country's leaders have pledged to do more to protect intellectual property rights amid complaints by the United States and other key trading partners about the theft of such assets. Elliot Papageorgiou, the Shanghai-based head of the IP practice at law firm Clyde & Co., said Visual China's use of the black hole image was embarrassing due to the photo's high profile. "It comes at an inconvenient time because China is trying hard to get recognition for some positive steps it is taking to protect intellectual property," he said.
The company had claimed to have received authorization for using the photo -- though not for commercial purposes -- from the European Southern Observatory. But today the government-owned China Daily newspaper notes that "The European Southern Observatory, responding to questions from the National Business Daily in an email, said Visual China never contacted it for any purpose regarding the image. It said Visual China did not need to ask for authorization to reproduce the image provided the credit was clear and visible, but 'the behavior of using the so-called authorization as a copyright to sell the image in China and profit from it is illegal...'"

"The official accounts of many large companies, including Baidu, Phoenix News Media, major retailer Suning and Qihoo 360, an internet security company, also left comments about having found their logos on Visual China with a copyright claim."

Alibaba founder and billionaire Jack Ma has defended the grueling overtime work culture at many of China's tech companies, calling it a "huge blessing" for young workers. Reuters reports: The e-commerce magnate weighed into a debate about work-life balance and the overtime hours demanded by some companies as the sector slows after years of breakneck growth. In a speech to Alibaba employees, Ma defended the industry's "996" work schedule, which refers to the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. workday, six days a week. "I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing," he said in remarks posted on the company's WeChat account. "Many companies and many people don't have the opportunity to work 996," Ma said. "If you don't work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996?"

"In this world, everyone wants success, wants a nice life, wants to be respected," Ma said. "Let me ask everyone, if you don't put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?" Ma referred to the tech industry today where some people are without jobs, or working at companies in search of revenue or facing closure. "Compared to them, up to this day, I still feel lucky, I don't regret (working 12 hour days), I would never change this part of me," he said. On Thursday, an unnamed author published an opinion piece in a state newspaper, arguing that 996 violates China's Labor Law, which stipulates that average work hours cannot exceed 40 hours a week. "Creating a corporate culture of 'encouraged overtime' will not only not help a business' core competitiveness, it might inhibit and damage a company's ability to innovate," the author wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: An American company is to build a series of undersea cables linking Australia to China after the Aussie government put its foot down and kicked Huawei off the contract. Building on our reports from last year that Australia had blocked Huawei from building a 4,000km cable between Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, U.S. company TE Subcom has reportedly won the deal to build the link.

"All options for meshing the Pacific Islands are good for the development of the economies of these countries," Keir Preedy, chief executive of the Solomon Island Submarine Cable Company, told Reuters. The company is developing the Solomons' new cable. In addition to the Aus-PNG-Solomons route previously announced, TE Subcom will build a cable spur to Hong Kong -- Chinese territory. "It is due for completion in 2022 and also includes a possible trans-Pacific branch to Los Angeles," the newswire stated.

Two out of three hotel websites inadvertently leak guests' booking details and personal data to third-party sites, including advertisers and analytics companies, according to research released by Symantec on Wednesday. From a report: The study, which looked at more than 1,500 hotel websites in 54 countries that ranged from two-star to five-star properties, comes several months after Marriott International disclosed one of the worst data breaches in history. Symantec said Marriott was not included in the study. Compromised personal information includes full names, email addresses, credit card details and passport numbers of guests that could be used by cybercriminals who are increasingly interested in the movements of influential business professionals and government employees, Symantec said.

EU data protection authorities are investigating whether the European Commission and other EU institutions comply with the bloc's strict data privacy rules in their software deals with Microsoft. From a report: The 28-country European Union adopted the landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) about a year ago, giving Europeans more control over their online information and privacy enforcers the power to impose hefty fines. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), which monitors the bloc's 70 institutions on their GDPR compliance, launched its investigation on Monday. The probe will look into the Microsoft products and services used by the institutions and whether the contractual agreements between them and the U.S. software company are GDPR-compliant. "When relying on third parties to provide services, the EU institutions remain accountable for any data processing carried out on their behalf," said Assistant EDPS Wojciech Wiewiorowski

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Japan's Toyota Motor Corp will offer free access to its hybrid-vehicle patents through 2030, it said on Wednesday, seeking to expand use of the lower-emission technology even as the global industry shifts toward fully electric cars. The pledge by one of the world's biggest automakers to share its closely guarded patents, the second time it has opened up a technology, is aimed at driving industry uptake of hybrids and fending off the challenge of all-battery electric vehicles (EVs).

Toyota said it would grant licenses on nearly 24,000 patents on technologies used in its Prius, the world's first mass-produced "green" car, and offer to supply competitors with components including motors, power converters and batteries used in its lower-emissions vehicles... Toyota's move to unlock its patents underlines its belief that hybrids are an effective alternative to all-battery EVs, given a fuel efficiency roughly double that of gasoline cars, lower cost and that they do not need charging infrastructure. Toyota vehicles account for more than 80 percent of the global hybrid vehicle market. "Toyota has realized that they made a mistake by protecting their hybrid technology for years. This prevented diffusion" said Janet Lewis, head of Asia transportation research at Macquarie Securities.

"Toyota on its own can't get key technology accepted, but if other companies use it, that offers the best chance of expansion," she added.
The article notes statistics from LMC Automotive that hybrid vehicles "account for around 3 percent of all vehicles sold globally, eclipsing the roughly 1.5 percent share of all-battery EVs."

Shigeki Terashi, Executive Vice President of Toyota, said, "we believe that now is the time for cooperation."

U.S. authorities gathered information about Huawei through secret surveillance that they plan to use in a case accusing the Chinese telecom equipment maker of sanctions-busting and bank fraud, prosecutors said on Thursday. From a report: Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Solomon said at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn that the evidence, obtained under the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), would require classified handling. The government notified Huawei in a court filing on Thursday of its intent to use the information, saying it was "obtained or derived from electronic surveillance and physical search," but gave no details. The United States has been pressuring other countries to drop Huawei from their cellular networks, worried its equipment could be used by Beijing for spying. The company says the concerns are unfounded. Brian Frey, a former federal prosecutor who is not involved in the Huawei case, said FISA surveillance, which requires a warrant from a special court, is generally sought in connection with suspected espionage.

The Norwegian Road Federation (NRF) said on Monday that almost 60 percent of all new cars sold in the country last month were fully electric, "a global record as the country seeks to end fossil-fueled vehicles sales by 2025," reports Reuters. From the report: Exempting battery engines from taxes imposed on diesel and petrol cars has upended Norway's auto market, elevating brands like Tesla and Nissan, with its Leaf model, while hurting sales of Toyota, Daimler and others. In 2018, Norway's fully electric car sales rose to a record 31.2 percent market share from 20.8 percent in 2017, far ahead of any other nation, and buyers had to wait as producers struggled to keep up with demand.

The surge of electric cars to a 58.4 percent market share in March came as Tesla ramped up delivery of its mid-sized Model 3, which retails from 442,000 crowns ($51,400), while Audi began deliveries of its 652,000-crowns e-tron sports utility vehicle. The sales figures consolidate Norway's global lead in electric car sales per capita, part of an attempt by Western Europe's biggest producer of oil and gas to transform to a greener economy.

A new bill sent to Singapore's parliament on Monday will require social media to carry warnings on posts it deems false and remove comments against "public interest." "The move came two days after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said governments should play a more active role in regulating the online platform," reports Reuters. From the report: Singapore, which has been run by the same political party since independence from Britain more than 50 years ago, says it is vulnerable to fake news because of its position as a global financial hub, its mixed ethnic and religious population and widespread internet access. The new bill proposes that the government get online platforms to publish warnings or "corrections alongside posts carrying false information, without removing them.

This would be the "primary response" to counter falsehoods online, the Law Ministry said. "That way, in a sense, people can read whatever they want and make up their minds. That is our preference," Law Minister K. Shanmugam told reporters on Monday. "This legislation deals with false statements of facts. It doesn't deal with opinions, it doesn't deal with viewpoints. You can have whatever viewpoints however reasonable or unreasonable." Under the proposals, which must be approved by parliament, criminal sanctions will only be imposed if the falsehoods are spread by "malicious actors" who "undermine society," the ministry said, without elaborating. It added that it would cut off an online site's "ability to profit," without shutting it down, if the site had published three falsehoods that were "against the public interest" over the previous six months. It did not say how it would block a site's profit streams.

A UAE cyber espionage contractor staffed with several former U.S. intelligence agents hacked journalists or news executives at Al Jazeera, the BBC, Al Arabi and others throughout June 2017, Reuters reported Monday. From the report: The American operatives worked for Project Raven, a secret Emirati intelligence program that spied on dissidents, militants and political opponents of the UAE monarchy. A Reuters investigation in January revealed Project Raven's existence and inner workings, including the fact that it surveilled a British activist and several unnamed U.S. journalists. The Raven operatives -- who included at least nine former employees of the U.S. National Security Agency and the U.S. military -- found themselves thrust into the thick of a high-stakes dispute among America's Gulf allies. The Americans' role in the UAE-Qatar imbroglio highlights how former U.S. intelligence officials have become key players in the cyber wars of other nations, with little oversight from Washington.

The crisis erupted in the spring of 2017, when the UAE and allies -- including Saudi Arabia and Egypt -- accused Qatar of sowing unrest in the Middle East through its support of media outlets and political groups. The UAE camp demanded Qatar take a series of actions, including shuttering the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera satellite television network, withdrawing funding from other media outlets Doha supports, and cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic movement some Arab governments regard as a threat.

Reuters reports: India expects space debris from its anti-satellite weapons launch to burn out in less than 45 days, its top defense scientist said on Thursday, seeking to allay global concern about fragments hitting objects. The comments came a day after India said it used an indigenously developed ballistic missile interceptor to destroy one of its own satellites at a height of 300 km (186 miles), in a test aimed at boosting its defenses in space.

Critics say such technology, known to be possessed only by the United States, Russia and China, raises the prospect of an arms race in outer space, besides posing a hazard by creating a cloud of fragments that could persist for years. G. Satheesh Reddy, the chief of India's Defence Research and Development Organisation, said a low-altitude military satellite was picked for the test, to reduce the risk of debris left in space.
Space.com shared a reaction from a national security affairs professor at Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. They argued that India's test "likely represents a feeling by other countries, specifically India in this case, that the weaponization of space is forthcoming, and India doesn't want to be left out of the 'have' category if arms-control agreements are eventually reached."

"The security chief for Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos said on Saturday that the Saudi government had access to Bezos' phone and gained private information from it," Reuters reports.

But in addition, the National Enquirer's lawyer "tried to get me to say there was no hacking," writes security specialist Gavin de Becker. I've recently seen things that have surprised even me, such as National Enquirer's parent company, AMI, being in league with a foreign nation that's been actively trying to harm American citizens and companies, including the owner of the Washington Post. You know him as Jeff Bezos; I know him as my client of 22 years... Why did AMI's people work so hard to identify a source, and insist to the New York Times and others that he was their sole source for everything? My best answer is contained in what happened next: AMI threatened to publish embarrassing photos of Jeff Bezos unless certain conditions were met. (These were photos that, for some reason, they had held back and not published in their first story on the Bezos affair, or any subsequent story.) While a brief summary of those terms has been made public before, others that I'm sharing are new -- and they reveal a great deal about what was motivating AMI.

An eight-page contract AMI sent for me and Bezos to sign would have required that I make a public statement, composed by them and then widely disseminated, saying that my investigation had concluded they hadn't relied upon "any form of electronic eavesdropping or hacking in their news-gathering process." Note here that I'd never publicly said anything about electronic eavesdropping or hacking -- and they wanted to be sure I couldn't.... An earlier set of their proposed terms included AMI making a statement "affirming that it undertook no electronic eavesdropping in connection with its reporting and has no knowledge of such conduct" -- but now they wanted me to say that for them. The contract further held that if Bezos or I were ever in our lives to "state, suggest or allude to" anything contrary to what AMI wanted said about electronic eavesdropping and hacking, then they could publish the embarrassing photos.

I'm writing this today because it's exactly what the Enquirer scheme was intended to prevent me from doing. Their contract also contained terms that would have inhibited both me and Bezos from initiating a report to law enforcement.

Things didn't work out as they hoped.
De Becker instead turned over his investigation's results to U.S. federal officials, then published today's essay warning the National Enquirer and its chairman have "evolved into trying to strong-arm an American citizen whom that country's leadership wanted harmed, compromised, and silenced." He also suggests it's in response to the "relentless" coverage by the Washington Post (which Bezos owns) of the murder of Saudi Arabian journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi.

"Experts with whom we consulted confirmed New York Times reports on the Saudi capability to 'collect vast amounts of previously inaccessible data from smartphones in the air without leaving a trace -- including phone calls, texts, emails.'"

Radioactive contamination from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant hit by a tsunami in 2011 has drifted as far north as waters off a remote Alaska island in the Bering Strait, scientists said on Wednesday. Reuters reports: Analysis of seawater collected last year near St. Lawrence Island revealed a slight elevation in levels of radioactive cesium-137 attributable to the Fukushima disaster, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Sea Grant program said. The newly detected Fukushima radiation was minute. The level of cesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear fission, in seawater was just four-tenths as high as traces of the isotope naturally found in the Pacific Ocean. Those levels are far too low to pose a health concern, an important point for people living on the Bering Sea coast who subsist on food caught in the ocean.

Those levels are far too low to pose a health concern, an important point for people living on the Bering Sea coast who subsist on food caught in the ocean, Sheffield said. Until the most recent St. Lawrence Island sample was tested by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the only other known sign of Fukushima radiation in the Bering Sea was detected in 2014 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report this week saying that in 2018, "global energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 1.7 percent to 33 Gigatonnes." That's the most growth in emissions that the world has seen since 2013. From a report: Coal use contributed to a third of the total increase, mostly from new coal-fired power plants in China and India. This is worrisome because new coal plants have a lifespan of roughly 50 years. But the consequences of climate change are already upon us, and coal's hefty emissions profile compared to other energy sources means that, globally, carbon mitigation is going to be a lot more difficult to tackle than it may look from here in the US.

Even in the US, carbon emissions grew by 3.1 percent in 2018, according to the IEA. (This closely tracks estimates by the Rhodium Group, which released a preliminary report in January saying that US carbon emissions increased by 3.4 percent in 2018.) "By country, China, the United States, and India together accounted for nearly 70 percent of the rise in energy demand," Reuters wrote.

India shot down one of its satellites in space with an anti-satellite missile on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, hailing the country's first test of such technology as a major breakthrough that establishes it as a space power. From a report: India would only be the fourth country to have used such an anti-satellite weapon after the United States, Russia and China, said Modi, who heads into general elections next month. "Our scientists shot down a live satellite 300 kilometres away in space, in low-earth orbit," Modi said in a television broadcast. "India has made an unprecedented achievement today," he added, speaking in Hindi. "India registered its name as a space power." Anti-satellite weapons allow for attacks on enemy satellites, blinding them or disrupting communications, as well as providing a technology base to intercept ballistic missiles. Update: U.S. says studying India anti-satellite weapons test, warns on debris.

India shot down one of its satellites in space with an anti-satellite missile on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, hailing the country's first test of such technology as a major breakthrough that establishes it as a space power. From a report: India would only be the fourth country to have used such an anti-satellite weapon after the United States, Russia and China, said Modi, who heads into general elections next month. "Our scientists shot down a live satellite 300 kilometres away in space, in low-earth orbit," Modi said in a television broadcast. "India has made an unprecedented achievement today," he added, speaking in Hindi. "India registered its name as a space power." Anti-satellite weapons allow for attacks on enemy satellites, blinding them or disrupting communications, as well as providing a technology base to intercept ballistic missiles. Update: U.S. says studying India anti-satellite weapons test, warns on debris.

Google announced today that it has formed an external advisory group -- dubbed the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC) -- that is tasked with "considering some of the most complex challenges in AI," including facial recognition and fairness in machine learning. From a report: The council, which is slated to publish a report at the end of 2019, includes technology experts, digital ethicists, and people with public policy backgrounds, Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president for global affairs, said at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology conference. The group is meant to provide recommendations for Google and other companies and researchers working in areas such as facial recognition software, a form of automation that has prompted concerns about racial bias and other limitations. "We want to have the most informed and thoughtful conversations we can," Walker said on stage at the MIT Technology Review event in San Francisco. "We want to sit down with the council and see what agenda they want to set."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: After seeing to it that UK Prime Minister David Cameron, US President Barack Obama, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau all received (widely-publicized) coding lessons, Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi noted in late 2016 that he was "still working on Pope Francis." GeekWire reports that Partovi was able to cross that one off his bucket list Thursday, as he helped Pope Francis become 'the first Pope to write a line of code' at a 'Programming for Peace' event organized by the Pope's foundation, Scholas Occurrentes, in Vatican City (not ready for Twitch.TV video).

"In the 21st century, computer science is a fundamental subject that all students should learn," said Partovi, whose tech-bankrolled nonprofit has entered a partnership with Scholas to introduce children to computer science. "Schools should teach computer science to prepare students for the future, empower children with creativity and teach how to harness technology and creativity." The Pontiff's programming lesson comes a month after Partovi's next-door neighbor, Microsoft President and Code.org Board member Brad Smith, had a sit-down with the Pope to discuss the ethical use of AI and ways to bridge the digital divide between rich and poor nations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams and other activists warned on Thursday that fully autonomous weapons could be deployed in just 3-4 years and urged Germany to lead an international campaign for a ban on so-called "killer robots." Williams, who won the Nobel in 1997 for leading efforts to ban landmines, told reporters Germany should take bold steps to ensure that humans remained in control of lethal weapons. "You cannot lead from the rear," she said. Critics fear that the increasingly autonomous drones, missile defense systems and tanks made possible by new artificial intelligence could turn rogue in a cyber-attack or as a result of programming errors.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called last week for action to ensure human control of lethal weapons, but is pushing a non-binding declaration rather than a global ban, given opposition by the United States, Russia and China. The United Nations and European Union have called for a global ban, but discussions so far have not yielded a clear commitment to conclude a treaty. Activists from over 100 non-governmental groups gathered in Berlin this week to pressure Maas and the German government to take more decisive action after twice endorsing a ban on fully autonomous weapons in their 2013 and 2018 coalition accords.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is expected to launch an ambitious new entertainment and paid digital news service on Monday, as the iPhone maker pushes back against streaming video leader Netflix. But it likely will not feature the New York Times. Mark Thompson, chief executive of the biggest U.S. newspaper by subscribers, warned that relying on third-party distribution can be dangerous for publishers who risk losing control over their own product. "We tend to be quite leery about the idea of almost habituating people to find our journalism somewhere else," he told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. "We're also generically worried about our journalism being scrambled in a kind of Magimix (blender) with everyone else's journalism."

Tesla is suing a former engineer at the company, claiming he copied the source code for its Autopilot technology before joining a Chinese self-driving car startup in January. Reuters reports: The engineer, Guangzhi Cao, copied more than 300,000 files related to Autopilot source code as he prepared to join China's Xiaopeng Motors Technology Company Ltd, the Silicon Valley carmaker said in the lawsuit filed in a California court. Separately, Tesla lawyers on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against four former employees and U.S. self-driving car startup Zoox Inc, alleging the employees stole proprietary information and trade secrets for developing warehousing, logistics and inventory control operations. The Verge reported on the lawsuit filed against Cao: Tesla says that last year, Cao started uploading "complete copies of Tesla's Autopilot-related source code" to his iCloud account. The company claims he ultimately moved more than 300,000 files and directories related to Autopilot. After accepting a job with XPeng at the end of last year, Tesla says Cao deleted 120,000 files off his work computer and disconnected his personal iCloud account, and then "repeatedly logged into Tesla's secure networks" to clear his browser history before his last day with the company. Tesla also claims Cao recruited another Autopilot employee to XPeng in February. Tesla claims that it gives XPeng "unfettered access" to Autopilot: "Absent immediate relief, Tesla believes Cao and his new employer, [XPeng], will continue to have unfettered access to Tesla's marquee technology, the product of more than five years' work and over hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, which they have no legal right to possess," the company's lawyers write.

Volvo is installing cameras and sensors in its cars from the early 2020s, monitoring drivers for signs of being drunk or distracted and intervening to prevent accidents. These new safety features come a couple weeks after the automaker announced it will limit the top speed to 112mph on all its new cars from 2020 to help reduce the number of accidents. Reuters reports: Head of R&D Henrik Green said cameras will be installed on all Volvo models built on its SPA2 platform for larger cars, starting from the XC90 SUV in the early part of the next decade, before being added to smaller cars built on its CMA platform. Volvo said intervention if the driver is found to be drunk, tired or distracted by checking a mobile phone - among the biggest factors in accidents - could involve limiting the car's speed, alerting the Volvo on Call assistance service, or slowing down and parking the car.

CEO Hakan Samuelsson said that while the strategies meant Volvo might lose some customers keen on high speeds, it also opened opportunities to win parents who wanted to buy the safest car to carry their children. "It would be easy to say that people can do whatever they like but we feel we have a responsibility to do this. Maybe people will see us as 'Big Brother,' but if we save some lives then it's worth it," he told journalists. Volvo also said it would introduce Care Key on cars from 2021, allowing buyers to set speed limits, and that it was talking to insurers to offer better terms for users of these safety features.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Shares in Germany's Bayer's fell more than 12 percent on Wednesday after a second U.S. jury ruled its Roundup weed killer caused cancer. Tuesday's unanimous jury decision in San Francisco federal court was not a finding of Bayer's liability for the cancer of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman. Liability and damages will be decided by the same jury in a second trial phase beginning on Wednesday. Bayer, which denies allegations that glyphosate or Roundup cause cancer, said it was disappointed with the jury's initial decision. Bayer acquired Monsanto, the longtime maker of Roundup, for $63 billion last year. The case was only the second of some 11,200 Roundup lawsuits to go to trial in the United States. Another California man was awarded $289 million in August after a state court jury found Roundup caused his cancer. That award was later reduced to $78 million and is on appeal.

Bayer had claimed that jury was overly influenced by plaintiffs' lawyers allegations of corporate misconduct and did not focus on the science. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria called such evidence "a distraction" from the scientific question of whether glyphosate causes cancer. He split the Hardeman case into two phases: one to decide causation, the other to determine Bayer's potential liability and damages. Under Chhabria's order, the second phase would only take place if the jury found Roundup to be a substantial factor in causing Hardeman's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The jury found that it was on Tuesday.

Google is trying to boost price comparison rivals such as Kelkoo in an effort to appease European Union antitrust regulators and ward off fresh fines following a $2.7 billion penalty nearly two years ago. "The European Commission said Alphabet unit Google had used its search engine market power to unfairly promote its own comparison shopping service," reports Reuters. From the report: The company subsequently offered to allow price-comparison rivals to bid for advertising space at the top of a search page, giving them the chance to compete on equal terms. But competitors said the measure failed to create a level playing field. Earlier this month, Google introduced a new link on its search results which aims to drive more traffic to price comparison rivals. British competitor Kelkoo said on its blog that it was one of several companies selected to try out the new link which will initially be available in Germany, France and the Netherlands. EU antitrust enforcers could levy fines up to 5 percent of Google's average daily worldwide turnover if it fails to comply with the 2017 order.

Zorro (Slashdot reader #15,759), shares Reuters' report about Michael Sharpe, a medical researcher studying chronic fatigue syndrome, "a little-understood condition that can bring crushing tiredness and pain." Eight years after he published results of a clinical trial that found some patients with chronic fatigue syndrome can get a little better with the right talking and exercise therapies, the Oxford University professor is subjected to almost daily, often anonymous, intimidation... They object to his work, they said, because they think it suggests their illness is psychological. Sharpe, a professor of psychological medicine, says that isn't the case. He believes that chronic fatigue syndrome is a biological condition that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors...

Sharpe is one of around a dozen researchers in this field worldwide who are on the receiving end of a campaign to discredit their work. For many scientists, it's a new normal: From climate change to vaccines, activism and science are fighting it out online. Social media platforms are supercharging the battle. Reuters contacted a dozen professors, doctors and researchers with experience of analysing or testing potential treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome. All said they had been the target of online harassment because activists objected to their findings. Only two had definite plans to continue researching treatments. With as many as 17 million people worldwide suffering this disabling illness, scientific research into possible therapies should be growing, these experts said, not dwindling. What concerns them most, they said, is that patients could lose out if treatment research stalls.
Sharpe says he's no longer researching treatments, because "It's just too toxic." And he tells Reuters that other researchers appear to be reaching the same conclusion.

"Of more than 20 leading research groups who were publishing treatment studies in high-quality journals 10 years ago, Sharpe said, only one or two continue to do so."

California was declared totally drought free for the first time in more than seven years this week, following unusually abundant winter rains and snowfall statewide, according to the government's weekly report on U.S. drought conditions. From a report: The U.S. Drought Monitor's latest survey reflected an astonishing turnaround - at least for now - from a severe, prolonged dry spell that reduced irrigation supplies to farmers, forced strict household conservation measures and stoked a spate of deadly, devastating wildfires. A relatively small swath of California's southern-most region, including most of San Diego County, remains labeled "abnormally dry" on the drought map index, as does a tiny patch at the state's extreme northern end along the Oregon border. But this week marks the first time since mid-December of 2011 that 100 percent of the state has been classified as being free of drought, defined as a moisture deficit severe enough to cause social, environmental or economic ills. Conditions were classified as normal across 93 percent of the state.

One thing you might not know about Beto O'Rourke, the former Texas congressman who just entered the race for president is that while a teenager, O'Rourke acknowledged in an exclusive interview to Reuters, he belonged to the oldest group of computer hackers in U.S. history. From the report: The hugely influential Cult of the Dead Cow, jokingly named after an abandoned Texas slaughterhouse, is notorious for releasing tools that allowed ordinary people to hack computers running Microsoft's Windows. It's also known for inventing the word "hacktivism" to describe human-rights-driven security work.

Members of the group have protected O'Rourke's secret for decades, reluctant to compromise his political viability. Now, in a series of interviews, CDC members have acknowledged O'Rourke as one of their own. Slashdot interviewed members of the Cult of the Cow in 1999 -- which gave bizarre answers.

Facebook said on Friday it would use AI to combat the spread of intimate photos shared without people's permission, sometimes called "revenge porn," on its social networks. From a report: The new technology is in addition to a pilot program that required trained representatives to review offending images. "By using machine learning and artificial intelligence, we can now proactively detect near nude images or videos that are shared without permission," the social networking giant said in a blog post. "This means we can find this content before anyone reports it." A member of Facebook's community operations team would review the content found by the new technology, and if found to be an offending image, remove it or disable the account responsible for spreading it, the company added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A push to launch a high-level study of potentially risky technological fixes to curb climate change was abandoned on Thursday at a U.N. environmental conference in Nairobi, as countries including the United States raised objections. "Geoengineering" technologies, which are gaining prominence as international efforts to curb climate-changing emissions fall short, aim to pull carbon out of the atmosphere or block some of the sun's warmth to cool the Earth. They could help fend off some of the worst impacts of runaway climate change, including worsening storms and heatwaves, backers say. But opponents argue the emerging technologies pose huge potential risks to people and nature, and could undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not least because many are backed by fossil-fuel interests. Observers at the U.N. Environment Assembly in Nairobi said the Swiss-backed proposal was rejected in part because it called for a "precautionary principle" approach to geoengineering the climate. That principle says great care must be taken in starting activities that have unclear risks for human health or the environment. The United States, Saudi Arabia and Brazil were among the strongest opponents of the proposal, with Japan also expressing reservations.

Smart TV manufacturer Vizio has formed a partnership with nine media and advertising companies to develop an industry standard that will allow smart TVs to target advertisements to specific households, the companies said this week. From a report: The consortium includes major TV networks like Comcast Corp's NBCUniversal and CBS, as well as advertising technology companies like AT&T's Xandr. Addressable advertising, or targeting viewers on the household level based on their interests, has long been the goal of TV marketers. But TVs lack cookies that internet browsers use to allow ads to follow people around the web. [...] The consortium of companies, dubbed Project OAR, or Open Addressable Ready, hopes to define the technical standards for TV programmers and platforms to deliver addressable advertising on smart TVs, which are WiFi-enabled TVs with apps for services like Netflix Inc and Hulu, by the end of this year, McAfee said. Further reading: In January this year, Bill Baxter, chief technology officer of Vizio, spoke about business of data collection in an interview. He said: It's about post-purchase monetization of the TV. This is a cutthroat industry. It's a 6-percent margin industry, right? I mean, you know it's pretty ruthless. You could say it's self-inflicted, or you could say there's a greater strategy going on here, and there is. The greater strategy is I really don't need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost. And then I need to make money off those TVs. They live in households for 6.9 years -- the average lifetime of a Vizio TV is 6.9 years. You would probably be amazed at the number of people come up to me saying, "I love Vizio TVs, I have one" and it's 11 years old. I'm like, "Dude, that's not even full HD, that's 720p." But they do last a long time and our strategy -- you've seen this with all of our software upgrades including AirPlay 2 and HomeKit -- is that we want to make things backward compatible to those TVs. So we're continuing to invest in those older TVs to bring them up to feature level comparison with the new TVs when there's no hardware limitation that would otherwise prevent that.

eatmorekix shares a report from Motherboard: Glocom, a front company for the government of North Korea that sells sanctioned equipment, isn't giving up. In 2017, before YouTube quietly removed Glocom's channel, the company was advertising missile navigation and other military products on the video platform. But Glocom has returned. It setup a new channel, and also had a presence on Twitter, until Motherboard flagged Glocom's accounts to social media companies. The news not only signals the perseverance of parts of the North Korean's money-making enterprises, but also a slice of the content moderation issues that tech platforms constantly face. Glocom "is using them as platforms to market sanctions violating products," Shea Cotton, research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and who has a particular focus on North Korea, told Motherboard in an email. A United Nations report says that Glocom is run by North Korean intelligence agents, even though it pitches itself as a Malaysian company.

Cotton said "this company continues to operate openly. Most DPRK [Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea] fronts, when exposed, usually fold or at the very least shut down and move their operations to another country and re-open under a new name. This one hasn't done that. We've seen them try to create this spin off brand called 'FACOM' and sell a few of their products under it but as you've seen their main brand is still thriving apparently."

China's aviation regulator today grounded nearly 100 Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 aircraft operated by its airlines, more than a quarter of the global fleet of the jets, after a deadly crash of one of the planes in Ethiopia. From a report: However, a U.S. official said it was unclear what information the Chinese regulator was acting on because the investigation of Sunday's crash, the second involving the latest version of the narrowbody jet, was in the early stages. Speaking on condition of anonymity as the topic is sensitive, the U.S. official said there were no plans to follow suit, as the jet had a stellar safety record in the United States and there was a lack of information on what caused the Ethiopian crash.

The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine isn't associated with an increased risk of autism even among kids who are at high risk because they have a sibling with the disorder, a Danish study suggests. From a report: Concerns about a potential link between the MMR vaccine and autism have persisted for two decades, since a controversial and ultimately retracted 1998 paper claimed there was a direct connection. Even though subsequent studies haven't tied inoculation to autism, fear about the risk has weighed on parents so much in several communities across Europe and the U.S. that vaccination rates have been too low to prevent a spate of measles outbreaks.

In the current study, researchers examined data on 657,461 children. During this time, 6,517 kids were diagnosed with autism. Kids who got the MMR vaccine were seven percent less likely to develop autism than children who didn't get vaccinated, researchers report in the Annals of Internal Medicine. "Parents should not skip the vaccine out of fear for autism," said lead study author Dr. Anders Hviid of the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark. "The dangers of not vaccinating includes a resurgence in measles which we are seeing signs of today in the form of outbreaks," Hviid said by email.

Uber is not criminally liable in a March 2018 crash in Tempe, Arizona, in which one of the company's self-driving cars struck and killed a pedestrian, prosecutors said on Tuesday. "The Yavapai County Attorney said in a letter made public that there was 'no basis for criminal liability' for Uber, but that the back-up driver, Rafaela Vasquez, should be referred to the Tempe police for additional investigation," reports Reuters. From the report: Vasquez, the Uber back-up driver, could face charges of vehicular manslaughter, according to a police report in June. Vasquez has not previously commented and could not immediately be reached on Tuesday. Based on a video taken inside the car, records collected from online entertainment streaming service Hulu and other evidence, police said last year that Vasquez was looking down and streaming an episode of the television show "The Voice" on a phone until about the time of the crash. The driver looked up a half-second before hitting Elaine Herzberg, 49, who died from her injuries. Police called the incident "entirely avoidable."

Yavapai County Attorney's Office, which examined the case at the request of Maricopa County where the accident occurred, did not explain the reasoning for not finding criminal liability against Uber. Yavapai sent the case back to Maricopa, calling for further expert analysis of the video to determine what the driver should have seen that night. The National Transportation Safety Board and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are still investigating.

Speaking of Volvo, the Swedish carmaker announced today that it has partnered with Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and unveiled a full-size autonomous electric bus for testing this year in the city state. From a report: High-density Singapore has been encouraging the development of driverless technology in hopes that its residents will use more shared vehicles and public transport. Tests with one bus on the university campus could begin in a few weeks to months, before moving to public roads after regulatory approvals, NTU President Subra Suresh told reporters. He hoped the tests could be extended to public roads in a year. A second bus will undergo tests at a city bus depot.

The 12-metre (39 ft) vehicle can carry up to 80 passengers and is the world's first full-size, autonomous electric bus, Volvo and NTU said. "This is the type of vehicle that real operators would use and that's why it is a milestone," Hakan Agnevall, president of Volvo Buses, told reporters.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Patently Apple: Firefox browser-maker Mozilla is considering whether to block cybersecurity company DarkMatter from serving as one of its internet security gatekeepers after a Reuters report linked the United Arab Emirates-based firm to a cyber espionage program. Reuters reported in January that DarkMatter provided staff for a secret hacking operation, codenamed Project Raven, on behalf of an Emirati intelligence agency. The unit was largely comprised of former U.S. intelligence officials who conducted offensive cyber operations for the UAE government. Former Raven operatives told Reuters that many DarkMatter executives were unaware of the secretive program, which operated from a converted Abu Dhabi mansion away from DarkMatter's headquarters.

Those operations included hacking into the internet accounts of human rights activists, journalists and officials from rival governments, Reuters found. DarkMatter has denied conducting the operations and says it focuses on protecting computer networks. While Mozilla had been considering whether to grant DarkMatter the authority to certify websites as safe, two Mozilla executives said in an interview last week that Reuters' report raised concerns about whether DarkMatter would abuse that authority. Mozilla said the company has not yet come to a decision on whether to deny the authority to DarkMatter, but expects to decide within weeks. Further reading available via Reuters

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Patently Apple: Firefox browser-maker Mozilla is considering whether to block cybersecurity company DarkMatter from serving as one of its internet security gatekeepers after a Reuters report linked the United Arab Emirates-based firm to a cyber espionage program. Reuters reported in January that DarkMatter provided staff for a secret hacking operation, codenamed Project Raven, on behalf of an Emirati intelligence agency. The unit was largely comprised of former U.S. intelligence officials who conducted offensive cyber operations for the UAE government. Former Raven operatives told Reuters that many DarkMatter executives were unaware of the secretive program, which operated from a converted Abu Dhabi mansion away from DarkMatter's headquarters.

Those operations included hacking into the internet accounts of human rights activists, journalists and officials from rival governments, Reuters found. DarkMatter has denied conducting the operations and says it focuses on protecting computer networks. While Mozilla had been considering whether to grant DarkMatter the authority to certify websites as safe, two Mozilla executives said in an interview last week that Reuters' report raised concerns about whether DarkMatter would abuse that authority. Mozilla said the company has not yet come to a decision on whether to deny the authority to DarkMatter, but expects to decide within weeks. Further reading available via Reuters

Scientists have reported that an HIV-positive man in Britain has been cleared of the AIDS virus after he received a bone marrow transplant from an HIV resistant donor. This is the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of HIV; the first was an American man, Timothy Brown, who became known as the Berlin patient when he underwent similar treatment in Germany more than a decade ago. According to HIV experts, Brown is still HIV-free. Reuters reports: Almost three years after receiving bone marrow stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection - and more than 18 months after coming off antiretroviral drugs - highly sensitive tests still show no trace of the man's previous HIV infection. The case is a proof of the concept that scientists will one day be able to end AIDS, the doctors said, but does not mean a cure for HIV has been found. The man is being called "the London patient," in part because his case is similar to the first known case of a functional cure of HIV.

"There is no virus there that we can measure. We can't detect anything," said Ravindra Gupta, a professor and HIV biologist who co-led a team of doctors treating the man. Gupta described his patient as "functionally cured" and "in remission," but cautioned: "It's too early to say he's cured." Gupta, now at Cambridge University, treated the London patient when he was working at University College London. The man had contracted HIV in 2003, Gupta said, and in 2012 was also diagnosed with a type of blood cancer called Hodgkin's Lymphoma. In 2016, when he was very sick with cancer, doctors decided to seek a transplant match for him. "This was really his last chance of survival," Gupta told Reuters in an interview. The donor -- who was unrelated -- had a genetic mutation known as "CCR5 delta 32," which confers resistance to HIV. The transplant went relatively smoothly, Gupta said, but there were some side effects, including the patient suffering a period of "graft-versus-host" disease - a condition in which donor immune cells attack the recipient's immune cells.

France's Finance Minister has drafted a new law to tax internet giants, reports Reuters: A three percent tax on the French revenue of large internet companies could yield 500 million euros [$568 million U.S. dollars or £429 million] per year, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday. Le Maire told Le Parisien newspaper the tax is aimed at companies with worldwide digital revenue of at least 750 million and French revenue of more than 25 million euros.

He said the tax would target some 30 companies, mostly American, but also Chinese, German, Spanish and British, as well as one French firm and several firms with French origins that have been bought by foreign companies. The paper listed Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (the four so-called "GAFA" companies) but also Uber, Airbnb, Booking and French online advertising specialist Criteo as targets. "A taxation system for the 21st century has to built on what has value today, and that is data," Le Maire said. He added it is also a matter of fiscal justice, as the digital giants pay some 14 percentage points less tax than European small-and-medium sized companies.
The draft law will be presented to the cabinet on Wednesday, and then presented to France's parliament, Reuters reports.

"The tax would also target the sales of personal data for advertising purposes."

AppleHoshi writes: The BBC is reporting that an accidental fire at Tesla's Gatwick Service Centre in the U.K. has damaged "at least half" of the facility. Initial reports are that the fire did not begin in the service area itself, but started in a parts storage area and spread from there. The fire was extinguished within three hours and no staff or customers were injured.
The fire "was not caused by Tesla cars, chargers or batteries," according to the West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service.

The Canadian government has allowed for the extradition proceedings against the CFO of Huawei to proceed. "Today, department of Justice Canada officials issued an authority to proceed, formally commencing an extradition process in the case of Ms. Meng Wanzhou," the government said in a statement. Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada in December at the request of American authorities, who allege that she violated U.S. sanctions against Iran. From the report: China, whose relations with Canada have deteriorated badly over the affair, denounced the decision and repeated previous demands for Meng's release. Legal experts had predicted Ottawa would give the go-ahead for extradition proceedings, given the close judicial relationship between Canada and the United States. It could be years though before Meng is ever sent to the United States, since Canada's slow-moving justice system allows many decisions to be appealed. Meng's lawyers said they were disappointed and described the U.S. charges as politically motivated.

U.S. companies installed more robots last year than ever before, as cheaper and more flexible machines put them within reach of businesses of all sizes and in more corners of the economy beyond their traditional foothold in car plants. From a report: Shipments hit 28,478, nearly 16 percent more than in 2017, according to data seen by Reuters that was set for release on Thursday by the Association for Advancing Automation, an industry group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Shipments increased in every sector the group tracks, except automotive, where carmakers cut back after finishing a major round of tooling up for new truck models.

Thailand's military-appointed parliament on Thursday passed a controversial cybersecurity law that gives sweeping powers to state cyber agencies, despite concerns from businesses and activists over judicial oversight and potential abuse of power. From a report: The Cybersecurity Act, approved unanimously, is the latest in a wave of new laws in Asian countries that assert government control over the internet. Civil liberties advocates, internet companies and business groups have protested the legislation, saying it would sacrifice privacy and the rule of law, and warning compliance burdens could drive foreign businesses out of Thailand. The military government has pushed for several laws it said would support the country's digital economy, including an amendment to the Computer Crime Act in 2017, which has been used to crack down on dissent.

BlackBerry has set its sights on Twitter in a new patent infringement lawsuit, accusing the social media company of illegally using technology in its mobile messaging apps that had been developed by the former smartphone maker. Reuters reports: The lawsuit said Twitter wrongly sought to compensate for being a "relative latecomer" to mobile messaging by co-opting Blackberry's inventions for such services as the main Twitter application and Twitter Ads, infringing six of the company's patents. Twitter "succeeded in diverting consumers away from BlackBerry's products and services" and toward its own by misappropriating features that made BlackBerry "a critical and commercial success in the first place," the complaint said.

The lawsuit resembles patent infringement cases that BlackBerry filed there last March and April against Facebook and Snap. Last August, U.S. District Judge George Wu allowed BlackBerry to pursue most of its infringement claims in those lawsuits, which according to court records remain pending. Wu may be assigned the case against San Francisco-based Twitter because federal courts often assign cases deemed "related" to a single judge. The Facebook and Snap lawsuits were deemed related.

An appeals court has approved AT&T's purchase of Time Warner, despite the Trump administration's drawn-out attempts to block the $85.4 billion acquisition. The U.S. Justice Department said it would not fight the decision. Reuters reports: The three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled unanimously in favor of the deal earlier on Tuesday, saying that the government's case that the merger would result in higher consumer prices was "unpersuasive." The decision ended a 15-month effort by the Justice Department to block it. It was AT&T's second major court victory against the Justice Department, setting the stage for the No. 2 wireless carrier to integrate its WarnerMedia business as well as its new Xandr advertising unit.

The deal has been seen as a turning point for a media industry that has been upended by companies like Netflix and Alphabet's Google which put content online with no need for a cable subscription. The merger, which was announced in October 2016, closed on June 14 shortly after Judge Richard Leon ruled the deal was legal under antitrust law. AT&T agreed it would have no role in setting Turner's prices to distributors and the number of Turner employees would remain largely unchanged.

Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps. Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is being shared with someone else: Facebook. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; here's an alternative source.] The Wall Street Journal reports: The social-media giant collects intensely personal information from many popular smartphone apps just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook, according to testing done by The Wall Street Journal. The apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure, the testing showed. [...] In the case of apps, the Journal's testing showed that Facebook software collects data from many apps even if no Facebook account is used to log in and if the end user isn't a Facebook member.

In the Journal's testing, Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor, the most popular heart-rate app on Apple's iOS, made by California-based Azumio, sent a user's heart rate to Facebook immediately after it was recorded. Flo Health's Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker, which claims 25 million active users, told Facebook when a user was having her period or informed the app of an intention to get pregnant, the tests showed. Real-estate app Realtor.com, owned by Move, a subsidiary of Wall Street Journal parent News Corp, sent the social network the location and price of listings that a user viewed, noting which ones were marked as favorites, the tests showed. None of those apps provided users any apparent way to stop that information from being sent to Facebook. Update: New York Governor Cuomo has ordered probe into Facebook access to personal data.