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upstart writes:

When their pay suddenly dropped, delivery drivers audited their employer:

In early 2020, gig workers for the app-based delivery company Shipt noticed something strange about their paychecks. The company, which had been acquired by Target in 2017 for US $550 million, offered same-day delivery from local stores. Those deliveries were made by Shipt workers, who shopped for the items and drove them to customers' doorsteps. Business was booming at the start of the pandemic, as the COVID-19 lockdowns kept people in their homes, and yet workers found that their paychecks had become...unpredictable. They were doing the same work they'd always done, yet their paychecks were often less than they expected. And they didn't know why.

On Facebook and Reddit, workers compared notes. Previously, they'd known what to expect from their pay because Shipt had a formula: It gave workers a base pay of $5 per delivery plus 7.5 percent of the total amount of the customer's order through the app. That formula allowed workers to look at order amounts and choose jobs that were worth their time. But Shipt had changed the payment rules without alerting workers. When the company finally issued a press release about the change, it revealed only that the new pay algorithm paid workers based on "effort," which included factors like the order amount, the estimated amount of time required for shopping, and the mileage driven.

The company claimed this new approach was fairer to workers and that it better matched the pay to the labor required for an order. Many workers, however, just saw their paychecks dwindling. And since Shipt didn't release detailed information about the algorithm, it was essentially a black box that the workers couldn't see inside.

The workers could have quietly accepted their fate, or sought employment elsewhere. Instead, they banded together, gathering data and forming partnerships with researchers and organizations to help them make sense of their pay data. [...]

[...] Companies whose business models rely on gig workers have an interest in keeping their algorithms opaque. This "information asymmetry" helps companies better control their workforces—they set the terms without divulging details, and workers' only choice is whether or not to accept those terms. The companies can, for example, vary pay structures from week to week, experimenting to find out, essentially, how little they can pay and still have workers accept the jobs. There's no technical reason why these algorithms need to be black boxes; the real reason is to maintain the power structure.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The president of the Economic Strategy Institute calls the Pentagon "lazy" in its request for a waiver.

Since 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense has been asking for a waiver from legislation barring it from doing business with companies reliant on telecommunications equipment manufactured by Huawei. With increased tensions between the U.S. and China and an ongoing chip war, that waiver may be harder to obtain. Still, Pentagon officials insist it would be impossible to lock Huawei out of all of the department’s operations.

The prohibition was signed into law as part of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. Under Section 889 of that act, government agencies are barred from entering into or renewing contracts with any country or company that uses Huawei telecommunications equipment.

The problem is that Huawei is the largest telecom provider in the world. According to Fortune, the Chinese company accounts for nearly one-third of all telecommunications equipment revenue globally. Many nations cannot shy away from the Chinese firm. Huawei’s products are often much less expensive than competing ones, and gutting an entire telecoms network to switch manufacturers would be a costly undertaking.

[...] Not everyone agrees the Pentagon should get a pass on avoiding working with Huawei customers. Some say the Defense Department needs to work more quickly and assertively to freeze Huawei out of its operations. Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, went so far as to call the Defense Department lazy. He says the Pentagon should leverage the fact that “for companies in those areas, to have big business with the U.S. Department of the Defense is important.”

Pentagon officials insist that granting the waiver authority is essential. They say it would enable important resupply missions in various parts of the world and maintain national security. U.S. military personnel often depend on Huawei networks, whether they are special operators on missions in the Indo-Pacific region or senior officers representing the U.S. at international air shows.

Congress is currently debating the next iteration of the National Defense Authorization Act, scheduled to take effect in 2025. Some lawmakers acknowledge that the Pentagon’s waiver authority is needed but won’t say when or if it will be added to the act. As of this writing, no waiver has been included in the draft of the act. If not resolved, defense officials say national security could be jeopardized, not assured.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/30-years-later-freedos-is-still-keeping-the-dream-of-the-command-prompt-alive/

Two big things happened in the world of text-based disk operating systems in June 1994.

The first is that Microsoft released MS-DOS version 6.22, the last version of its long-running operating system that would be sold to consumers as a standalone product. MS-DOS would continue to evolve for a few years after this, but only as an increasingly invisible loading mechanism for Windows.

The second was that a developer named Jim Hall wrote a post announcing something called "PD-DOS."

PD-DOS would soon be renamed FreeDOS, and 30 years and many contributions later, it stands as the last MS-DOS-compatible operating system still under active development.

[...] To mark FreeDOS' 20th anniversary in 2014, we talked with Hall and other FreeDOS maintainers about its continued relevance, the legacy of DOS, and the developers' since-abandoned plans to add ambitious modern features like multitasking and built-in networking support (we also tried, earnestly but with mixed success, to do a modern day's work using only FreeDOS).

[...] For the 30th anniversary, we've checked in with Hall again about how the last decade or so has treated the FreeDOS project, why it's still important, and how it continues to draw new users into the fold. We also talked, strange as it might seem, about what the future might hold for this inherently backward-looking operating system.

[...] "Compared to about 10 years ago, I'd say the interest level in FreeDOS is about the same," Hall told Ars in an email interview. "Our developer community has remained about the same over that time, I think. And judging by the emails that people send me to ask questions, or the new folks I see asking questions on our freedos-user or freedos-devel email lists, or the people talking about FreeDOS on the Facebook group and other forums, I'd say there are still about the same number of people who are participating in the FreeDOS community in some way."

[...] Though it's still being downloaded and used, shifts in PC hardware are making it more difficult to install and run FreeDOS directly on a new PC.

[...] One issue is the UEFI firmware used to boot modern PCs. UEFI began replacing the traditional PC BIOS at the tail end of the 2000s, and today, it's the default mechanism used for booting Windows, macOS, and Linux, though Windows and Linux both technically can still boot on non-UEFI systems.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/congress-apparently-feels-a-need-for-reaffirmation-of-sls-rocket/

There is a curious section in the new congressional reauthorization bill for NASA that concerns the agency's large Space Launch System rocket.

The section is titled "Reaffirmation of the Space Launch System," and in it Congress asserts its commitment to a flight rate of twice per year for the rocket. The reauthorization legislation, which cleared a House committee on Wednesday, also said NASA should identify other customers for the rocket.

[...] Congress created the SLS rocket 14 years ago with the NASA Authorization Act of 2010. The large rocket kept a river of contracts flowing to large aerospace companies, including Boeing and Northrop Grumman, who had been operating the Space Shuttle. Congress then lavished tens of billions of dollars on the contractors over the years for development, often authorizing more money than NASA said it needed. Congressional support was unwavering, at least in part because the SLS program boasts that it has jobs in every state.

[...] With this legislation, then, Congress is asking NASA to find other customers for the rocket, be they from the private sector, US Department of Defense, or elsewhere. This is a bit like selling sand to a Bedouin, and NASA has already fought this losing fight in the past. The Department of Defense has said thanks but no thanks.

NASA also sought another "customer" in its Science Directorate, offering the SLS to launch the $4 billion Europa Clipper spacecraft on the SLS rocket. However, in 2021, the agency said it would use a Falcon Heavy provided by SpaceX. The agency's cost for this was $178 million, compared to the more than $2 billion it would have cost to use the SLS rocket for such a mission. Additionally, mission scientists had serious concerns about a "shaking" issue with the SLS rocket. This large vehicle is powered off the pad by two very large solid rocket boosters that produce significant vibrations.

[...] There can be little question that the SLS program and its contractors are feeling the heat as these commercial rockets come to the fore. New Glenn is likely to make its debut this year or early next and is pushing for first-stage reusability to lower costs. SpaceX has launched its experimental Starship vehicle four times since the debut of the SLS rocket and will probably launch it at least half a dozen more times before the next SLS launch. Whereas NASA's 'stretch' goal for SLS is to launch the rocket twice a year, SpaceX is working toward launching multiple Starships a day.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Boeing accepts guilty plea deal over 737 Max crashes:

Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge related to a pair of crashes of its 737 Max planes, as part of a plea deal with the US Department of Justice. Lawyers for the victims' families plan to object to the deal, which was forged on Sunday just before a midnight deadline and must still be approved by a federal judge.

The two crashes, which happened in 2018 and 2019, killed more than 300 people. The planes malfunctioned because of software that was intended to correct for a design flaw — and that software, called MCAS, relied on just a single external sensor for its data. However, when Boeing launched the 737 Max, it didn't tell the Federal Aviation Administration, airlines, or pilots about MCAS in order to skirt time-consuming safety regulations. When the two flights went down, the pilots were actively fighting against MCAS — and likely did not even know the software existed.

The agreement allows Boeing to avoid a trial after the Justice Department found the company had violated a former settlement that previously shielded it from prosecution. In 2021, Boeing entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ over the crashes and was fined $2.5 billion. Under the new deal, Boeing now faces up to $487.2 million in additional penalties, and has agreed to install an independent oversight monitor and spend at least $455 million to improve its compliance and safety programs. The company is also subject to court-supervised probation over the next three years, according to the court filing.

Boeing's board of directors has also agreed to a meeting with families of the crash victims as part of the agreement, which the families have criticized as a "sweetheart deal." Paul Cassell, a lawyer for victims' family members, is planning to object to the deal on their behalf, saying to The Washington Post that "through crafty lawyering between Boeing and DOJ, the deadly consequences of Boeing's crime are being hidden." Boeing previously agreed to pay the families $500 million.

"We are extremely disappointed that DOJ is moving forward with this wholly inadequate plea deal despite the families' strong opposition to its terms," said Erin Applebaum, who is also representing families of the crash victims, in a statement to Bloomberg. "While we're encouraged that Boeing will not be able to choose its own monitor, the deal is still nothing more than a slap on the wrist and will do nothing to effectuate meaningful change within the company."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Brazil’s data protection authority (ANPD) has banned Meta from training its artificial intelligence models on Brazilian personal data, citing the “risks of serious damage and difficulty to users.” The decision follows an update to Meta’s privacy policy in May in which the social media giant granted itself permission to use public Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram data from Brazil — including posts, images, and captions — for AI training.

The decision follows a report published by Human Rights Watch last month which found that LAION-5B — one of the largest image-caption datasets used to train AI models — contains personal, identifiable photos of Brazilian children, placing them at risk of deepfakes and other exploitation.

[...] Meta said in a statement to the AP that its updated policy “complies with privacy laws and regulations in Brazil,” and that the ruling is “a step backwards for innovation, competition in AI development and further delays bringing the benefits of AI to people in Brazil.” While Meta says users can opt out of having their data used to train AI, ANPD says there are “excessive and unjustified obstacles” in place that make it difficult to do so.

Meta received similar pushback from regulators in the EU causing the company to pause plans to train its AI models on European Facebook and Instagram posts. Meta’s updated data collection policies are already in effect in the US, however, which lacks comparable user privacy protections.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/middle-schoolers-lash-out-at-20-teachers-with-disturbing-fake-tiktok-accounts/

A bunch of eighth graders in a "wealthy Philadelphia suburb" recently targeted teachers with an extreme online harassment campaign that The New York Times reported was "the first known group TikTok attack of its kind by middle schoolers on their teachers in the United States."

According to The Times, the Great Valley Middle School students created at least 22 fake accounts impersonating about 20 teachers in offensive ways. The fake accounts portrayed long-time, dedicated teachers sharing "pedophilia innuendo, racist memes," and homophobic posts, as well as posts fabricating "sexual hookups among teachers."

[...] Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association—which is the largest US teachers' union—told The Times that teachers have never dealt with such harassment on this scale. Typically, The Times reported, students would target a single educator at a time. Pringle said teachers risk online harassment being increasingly normalized. That "could push educators to question" leaving the profession, Pringle said, at a time when the US Department of Education is already combating a teacher shortage.

[...] TikTok's community guidelines ban impersonation, except for "parody or fan-based" accounts. The platform provides paths within the app and on its website to report impersonation, requiring teachers to show ID to request a takedown.

TikTok's enforcement so far seems uneven. Some teachers told The Times that they reported fake accounts and never heard back from TikTok. Others said they were not comfortable sharing an ID with TikTok for privacy reasons and therefore never reported the fake accounts.

[...] The only accounts that seemed to be promptly removed were four fake accounts flagged by a reporter that TikTok confirmed were deleted. TikTok found that the majority of other accounts flagged were unavailable.

[...] Reporting the behavior to TikTok could result in the most serious consequences for fans of TikTok: a ban that could trigger bans on all their other TikTok accounts. But that only happens in "the case of severe violations of our rules or engagement in circumvention behavior," TikTok's community guidelines said. That suggests that the middle schoolers would have to continually create new accounts to evade bans before TikTok may cut off their access to the platform.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Samsung launches Galaxy smart ring to track sleep and periods:

Samsung becomes first tech giant to launch a smart ring.

Samsung is hoping to lure fitness and health-tracking technology lovers with its newest wearable device - the Galaxy Ring.

It launched the device at its Galaxy Unpacked event on Wednesday as the latest addition to its ecosystem of devices it says it is "supercharging" with artificial intelligence (AI).

Smart rings, which use tiny sensors to monitor various health metrics, have up to now been a niche product - though their recent use by the England men's football team made headlines.

It seems Samsung is attempting to change that, becoming the largest tech company yet to enter the smart ring market.

Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight, says the product choice is an "interesting bet" for Samsung, with his company estimating that there will be a total global market of around four million smart rings in 2025.

"That is a rounding error when compared with 250 million smartwatches that are also expected to be sold," he told the BBC.

But others suggest Samsung may help make smart rings more mainstream.

"For most consumers, the smart ring from Samsung will be the first contact they will have in the smart ring, and that top of mind awareness makes a huge difference in the long-term," says Francisco Jeronimo, analyst for market research firm IDC.

Arthur T Knackerbracket wrote the following story:

By University of Illinois Chicago July 9, 2024

Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have debunked four myths about intermittent fasting: it does not lead to a poor diet, cause eating disorders, result in excessive loss of lean muscle mass, or affect sex hormones. These conclusions, based on clinical studies, confirm the safety of both alternate-day eating and time-restricted eating methods.

In a recent article, researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago have debunked four common misconceptions regarding the safety of intermittent fasting.

Intermittent fasting has become an increasingly popular way to lose weight without counting calories. And a large body of research has shown it’s safe. Still, several myths about fasting have gained traction among clinicians, journalists and the general public: that fasting can lead to a poor diet or loss of lean muscle mass, cause eating disorders, or decrease sex hormones.

In a new commentary in Nature Reviews Endocrinology, UIC researchers debunk each of these. They base their conclusions on clinical studies, some of which they conducted and some done by others.

“I’ve been studying intermittent fasting for 20 years, and I’m constantly asked if the diets are safe,” said lead author Krista Varady, professor of kinesiology and nutrition at UIC. “There is a lot of misinformation out there. However, those ideas are not based on science; they’re just based on personal opinion.”

quietus writes:

On August 8, Elon Musk is going to present his fully-autonomous, all-electric car. But on the other side of the Atlantic, somebody has pipped him to it.

That somebody is a real tech wunderkind, a 36-year old Bosnian/Croatian by the name of Mate Rimac.

During his high-school years, Mr. Rimac won local, national and international competitions for electronics and innovation. Then he got interested into racing, and, at the age of 18, bought the cheapest racing car he could find, a 1984 BMW E30 323i. After that car's gasoline engine exploded during a race, he decided to turn the car into an electric one.

That was 2006. He was laughed at and ridiculed for the idea alone, but by 2009 his car started winning races, while beating a couple of world FIA and Guinness records. That success encouraged him to try and start a company which built electrical cars, insisting that the company should be based in Croatia, which did not have a car industry to talk about. Fast forward some more episodes of ridicule, tethering on the edge of bankruptcy and so on, and that fledgling company has turned into the main provider for battery software and electrical powertrain systems to about half the car industry, world-wide: Porsche, Hyundai, Kia, Renault, Jaguar, Aston Martin, SEAT, Koenigsegg and Automobili Pininfarina are some of its customers.

Rimac didn't stop building cars though: supercar enthusiasts know him, and his partner in crime, designer Adriano Mudri, as the men behind the Rimac Nevera (which can be yours for a cool (estimated) $2.2 million), and the guys who, three years ago, took over Bugatti from Volkswagen, with the participation of Porsche.

And now Rimac Automobili has come out with the Rimac Verne (yes, yes, that Verne), a fully autonomous robotaxi. Rollout towards world domination starts in 2026 in Zagreb, Croatia, where you'll be able to order its taxis through an app, complete with the interior lighting and scent you want. What you will need, though, is a bit of trust: there will be no steering wheel or brakes present, which might turn into an advantage in case you want to get rid of your elderly mother-in-law for a while.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The US Supreme Court has avoided making a final decision on challenges to the Texas and Florida social media laws, but the majority opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan criticized the Texas law and made it clear that content moderation is protected by the First Amendment.

The Texas law "is unlikely to withstand First Amendment scrutiny," the Supreme Court majority wrote. "Texas has thus far justified the law as necessary to balance the mix of speech on Facebook's News Feed and similar platforms; and the record reflects that Texas officials passed it because they thought those feeds skewed against politically conservative voices. But this Court has many times held, in many contexts, that it is no job for government to decide what counts as the right balance of private expression—to 'un-bias' what it thinks biased, rather than to leave such judgments to speakers and their audiences. That principle works for social-media platforms as it does for others."

A Big Tech lobby group that challenged the state laws said it was pleased by the ruling. "In a complex series of opinions that were unanimous in the outcome, but divided 6-3 in their reasoning, the Court sent the cases back to lower courts, making clear that a State may not interfere with private actors' speech," the Computer & Communications Industry Association said.

[...] The Supreme Court said it remanded the cases to the appeals courts because the courts didn't do a full analysis of the laws' effects. "Today, we vacate both decisions for reasons separate from the First Amendment merits, because neither Court of Appeals properly considered the facial nature of [tech industry lobby group] NetChoice's challenge," the court majority wrote.

Justices found that the lower courts focused too much on the biggest platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, without considering the wider effects of the laws. The majority wrote:

The courts mainly addressed what the parties had focused on. And the parties mainly argued these cases as if the laws applied only to the curated feeds offered by the largest and most paradigmatic social-media platforms—as if, say, each case presented an as-applied challenge brought by Facebook protesting its loss of control over the content of its News Feed. But argument in this Court revealed that the laws might apply to, and differently affect, other kinds of websites and apps. In a facial challenge, that could well matter, even when the challenge is brought under the First Amendment.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/07/the-dangers-of-sneezing-from-ejected-bowels-to-torn-windpipes/

If you were to envision the kind of accident that would cause a person's bowels to explode out of their body, you might imagine some sort of gruesome stabbing or grisly car accident. You'd probably never imagine that something as commonplace and harmless as a sneeze would cause this kind of ghastly injury—but that's exactly what happened to a Florida man earlier this month.

The man had recently had abdominal surgery and was suffering from wound dehiscence—where his surgical scar wasn't healing properly.

[...] Sneezing is normally a protective mechanism that keeps potentially harmful things—such as dust, bacteria and viruses – out of our respiratory system. The process is controlled by the so-called "sneezing center" in the brain's medulla (which governs autonomic functions, including breathing). It's activated by the presence of irritants in the lining of the nose and airways, which send impulses to the center.

The response is a closing of your eyes, throat and mouth while your chest muscles contract—compressing your lungs and driving air out of your respiratory system. This forces whatever triggered the response "out" of your system at an impressive speed—up to 15.9m/s (35mph) in some cases.

[...] Given all the potential injuries a sneeze can cause, you might think it's better to hold them in.

But even that isn't safe to do. In 2023, a Scottish man held in a sneeze by closing his mouth and holding his nose. This resulted in him tearing his windpipe. By closing off his airways, this allowed the pressure generated by the sneeze to build up inside the respiratory system—which can sometimes be up to 20 times the pressure normally seen in the respiratory system. But this energy has to go somewhere, so is typically absorbed by the tissues.

Others have fractured bones of their face holding in sneezes, damaged their larynx (voice box), and torn the tissues in their chest that protect the lungs.

Thankfully, there is one injury that would be impossible for a sneeze to cause. Ever been told that if you sneeze with your eyes open, it'll cause them to pop out? Thankfully, that's just a tall tale.

Original Submission

oregonjohn writes:

Propublica report July 8, 2024 https://www.propublica.org/article/cyber-safety-board-never-investigated-solarwinds-breach-microsoft

"After Russian intelligence launched one of the most devastating cyber espionage attacks in history against U.S. government agencies, the Biden administration set up a new board and tasked it to figure out what happened — and tell the public."

"The intruders used malicious code and a flaw in a Microsoft product to steal intelligence from the National Nuclear Security Administration, National Institutes of Health and the Treasury Department in what Microsoft President Brad Smith called "the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.""

"A full, public accounting of what happened in the Solar Winds case would have been devastating to Microsoft. ProPublica recently revealed that Microsoft had long known about — but refused to address — a flaw used in the hack. The tech company's failure to act reflected a corporate culture that prioritized profit over security and left the U.S. government vulnerable, a whistleblower said."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Meta continues to hit walls with its heavily scrutinized plan to comply with the European Union's strict online competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), by offering Facebook and Instagram subscriptions as an alternative for privacy-inclined users who want to opt out of ad targeting.

Today, the European Commission (EC) announced preliminary findings that Meta's so-called "pay or consent" or "pay or OK" model—which gives users a choice to either pay for access to its platforms or give consent to collect user data to target ads—is not compliant with the DMA.

According to the EC, Meta's advertising model violates the DMA in two ways. First, it "does not allow users to opt for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise equivalent to the 'personalized ads-based service." And second, it "does not allow users to exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data," the press release said.

[...] "The DMA is there to give back to the users the power to decide how their data is used and ensure innovative companies can compete on equal footing with tech giants on data access," Breton said.

A Meta spokesperson told Ars that Meta plans to fight the findings—which could trigger fines up to 10 percent of the company's worldwide turnover, as well as fines up to 20 percent for repeat infringement if Meta loses.

Meta continues to claim that its "subscription for no ads" model was "endorsed" by the highest court in Europe, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), last year.

[...] However, some critics have noted that the supposed endorsement was not an official part of the ruling and that particular case was not regarding DMA compliance.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/neinnines/

I picked up the new book Compromised last week and was intrigued to discover that it may have shed some light on a small (and rather esoteric) cryptologic and espionage mystery that I've been puzzling over for about 15 years. Compromised is primarily a memoir of former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok's investigation into Russian operations in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, but this post is not a review of the book or concerned with that aspect of it.

Early in the book, as an almost throwaway bit of background color, Strzok discusses his work in Boston investigating the famous Russian "illegals" espionage network from 2000 until their arrest (and subsequent exchange with Russia) in 2010. "Illegals" are foreign agents operating abroad under false identities and without official or diplomatic cover. In this case, ten Russian illegals were living and working in the US under false Canadian and American identities. (The case inspired the recent TV series The Americans.)

Strzok was the case agent responsible for two of the suspects, Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova (posing as a Canadian couple under the aliases Donald Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley). The author recounts watching from the street on Thursday evenings as Vavilova received encrypted shortwave "numbers" transmissions in their Cambridge, MA apartment.

Given that Bezrukov and Vaviloa were indeed, as the FBI suspected, Russian spies, it's not surprising that they were sent messages from headquarters using this method; numbers stations are part of time-honored espionage tradecraft for communicating with covert agents. But their capture may have illustrated how subtle errors can cause these systems to fail badly in practice, even when the cryptography itself is sound.

Original Submission