An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs On Security: Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geo-locate devices. Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of billions of devices globally -- including non-Apple devices like Starlink systems -- and found they could use this data to monitor the destruction of Gaza, as well as the movements and in many cases identities of Russian and Ukrainian troops. At issue is the way that Apple collects and publicly shares information about the precise location of all Wi-Fi access points seen by its devices. Apple collects this location data to give Apple devices a crowdsourced, low-power alternative to constantly requesting global positioning system (GPS) coordinates.

Both Apple and Google operate their own Wi-Fi-based Positioning Systems (WPS) that obtain certain hardware identifiers from all wireless access points that come within range of their mobile devices. Both record the Media Access Control (MAC) address that a Wi-FI access point uses, known as a Basic Service Set Identifier or BSSID. Periodically, Apple and Google mobile devices will forward their locations -- by querying GPS and/or by using cellular towers as landmarks -- along with any nearby BSSIDs. This combination of data allows Apple and Google devices to figure out where they are within a few feet or meters, and it's what allows your mobile phone to continue displaying your planned route even when the device can't get a fix on GPS.

With Google's WPS, a wireless device submits a list of nearby Wi-Fi access point BSSIDs and their signal strengths -- via an application programming interface (API) request to Google -- whose WPS responds with the device's computed position. Google's WPS requires at least two BSSIDs to calculate a device's approximate position. Apple's WPS also accepts a list of nearby BSSIDs, but instead of computing the device's location based off the set of observed access points and their received signal strengths and then reporting that result to the user, Apple's API will return the geolocations of up to 400 hundred more BSSIDs that are nearby the one requested. It then uses approximately eight of those BSSIDs to work out the user's location based on known landmarks.

In essence, Google's WPS computes the user's location and shares it with the device. Apple's WPS gives its devices a large enough amount of data about the location of known access points in the area that the devices can do that estimation on their own. That's according to two researchers at the University of Maryland, who theorized they could use the verbosity of Apple's API to map the movement of individual devices into and out of virtually any defined area of the world. The UMD pair said they spent a month early in their research continuously querying the API, asking it for the location of more than a billion BSSIDs generated at random. They learned that while only about three million of those randomly generated BSSIDs were known to Apple's Wi-Fi geolocation API, Apple also returned an additional 488 million BSSID locations already stored in its WPS from other lookups. "Plotting the locations returned by Apple's WPS between November 2022 and November 2023, Levin and Rye saw they had a near global view of the locations tied to more than two billion Wi-Fi access points," the report adds. "The map showed geolocated access points in nearly every corner of the globe, apart from almost the entirety of China, vast stretches of desert wilderness in central Australia and Africa, and deep in the rainforests of South America."

The researchers wrote: "We observe routers move between cities and countries, potentially representing their owner's relocation or a business transaction between an old and new owner. While there is not necessarily a 1-to-1 relationship between Wi-Fi routers and users, home routers typically only have several. If these users are vulnerable populations, such as those fleeing intimate partner violence or a stalker, their router simply being online can disclose their new location."

A copy of the UMD research is available here (PDF).

Meta's AI chief said the large language models that power generative AI products such as ChatGPT would never achieve the ability to reason and plan like humans, as he focused instead on a radical alternative approach to create "superintelligence" in machines. From a report: Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at the social media giant that owns Facebook and Instagram, said LLMs had "very limited understanding of logicâ... do not understand the physical world, do not have persistent memory, cannot reason in any reasonable definition of the term and cannot planâ...âhierarchically."

In an interview with the Financial Times, he argued against relying on advancing LLMs in the quest to make human-level intelligence, as these models can only answer prompts accurately if they have been fed the right training data and are, therefore, "intrinsically unsafe." Instead, he is working to develop an entirely new generation of AI systems that he hopes will power machines with human-level intelligence, although he said this vision could take 10 years to achieve. Meta has been pouring billions of dollars into developing its own LLMs as generative AI has exploded, aiming to catch up with rival tech groups, including Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Alphabet's Google.

It seems no industry is safe from consolidation, and the latest target is gaming media. From a report: IGN Entertainment has acquired the website portfolio of UK publisher Gamer Network, which operates a number of beloved games-focused publications. That list includes Gamesindustry.biz, Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247, and the tabletop site Dicebreaker. The network also holds shares in sites like Nintendo Life and Digital Foundry.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Gamesindustry.biz reports that "some redundancies" have been made across the sites, though it's not clear how many workers have been impacted. According to several posts on X, editors at both Rock Paper Shotgun and Gamesindustry.biz have been laid off. IGN Entertainment is owned by Ziff Davis, which, in addition to IGN's site, also operates other subsidiaries like Humble Bundle.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Computer pioneer Gordon Bell, who as an early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) played a key role in the development of several influential minicomputer systems and also co-founded the first major computer museum, passed away on Friday, according to Bell Labs veteran John Mashey. Mashey announced Bell's passing in a social media post on Tuesday morning. "I am very sad to report [the] death May 17 at age 89 of Gordon Bell, famous computer pioneer, a founder of Computer Museum in Boston, and a force behind the @ComputerHistory here in Silicon Valley, and good friend since the 1980s," wrote Mashey in his announcement. "He succumbed to aspiration pneumonia in Coronado, CA."

Bell was a pivotal figure in the history of computing and a notable champion of tech history, having founded Boston's Computer Museum in 1979, which later became the heart of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, with his wife Gwen Bell. He was also the namesake of the ACM's prestigious Gordon Bell Prize, created to spur innovations in parallel processing. Bell also mentored at Microsoft in 1995, where he "studied telepresence technologies and served as the subject of the MyLifeBits life-logging project," reports Ars. "The initiative aimed to realize Vannevar Bush's vision of a system that could store all the documents, photos, and audio a person experienced in their lifetime."

Former Windows VP Steven Sinofsky said Bell "was immeasurably helpful at Microsoft where he was a founding advisor and later full time leader in Microsoft Research. He advised and supported countless researchers, projects, and product teams. He was always supportive and insightful beyond words. He never hesitated to provide insights and a few sparks at so many of the offsites that were so important to the evolution of Microsoft."

"His memory is a blessing to so many," added Sinofsky in a post memorializing Bell. "His impact on all of us in technology will be felt for generations. May he rest in peace."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Scams are all over the internet, and AI is making matters worse (no, Taylor Swift didn't giveaway Le Creuset pans, and Tom Hanks didn't promote a dental plan). Now, companies such as Match Group, Meta and Coinbase are launching Tech Against Scams, a new coalition focused on collaboration to prevent online fraud and financial schemes. They will "collaborate on ways to take action against the tools used by scammers, educate and protect consumers and disrupt rapidly evolving financial scams."

Meta, Coinbase and Match Group -- which owns Hinge and Tinder -- first joined forces on this issue last summer but are now teaming up with additional digital, social media and crypto companies, along with the Global Anti-Scam Organization. A major focus of this coalition is pig butchering scams, a type of fraud in which a scammer tricks someone into giving them more and more money through trusting digital relationships, both romantic and platonic in nature.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday urged water utilities to take action to improve their digital defenses, following a spate of recent cyberattacks. From a report: The agency's "enforcement alert" said that recent inspections of water systems found that more than 70 percent fail to meet basic cybersecurity standards, including some with "critical" vulnerabilities, such as relying on default passwords that haven't been updated and single logins that "can easily be compromised." The notice comes after a Russian hacktivist group claimed credit for digital assaults on water sites in Texas and Indiana. Late last year, Iran-linked Cyber Av3ngers group took responsibility for striking a water authority in Pennsylvania.

Julian Assange has won a victory in his ongoing battle against extradition from the UK after judges at the high court in London granted him leave to appeal. From a report: Two judges deferred a decision in March on whether Assange, who is trying to avoid being prosecuted in the US on espionage charges relating to the publication of thousands of classified and diplomatic documents, could take his case to another appeal hearing. Assange had been granted permission to appeal only if the Biden administration was unable to provide the court with suitable assurances "that the applicant [Assange] is permitted to rely on the first amendment, that the applicant is not prejudiced at trial, including sentence, by reason of his nationality, that he is afforded the same first amendment [free speech] protections as a United States citizen, and that the death penalty is not imposed."

Legal argument on Monday focused on the issue of whether Assange would be allowed first amendment protections. Assange's team did not contest the assurance around the death penalty, accepting that it was an "unambiguous executive promise." Assange has been indicted on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse, exposing him to a maximum 175 years in prison, over his website's publication of a trove of classified US documents almost 15 years ago.

"Last week, we reported on a customer who was charged $277 for gasoline his rented Tesla couldn't have possibly used," writes the automotive blog The Drive.

"And now, we've heard from other Hertz customers who say they've been charged even more." Hertz caught attention last week for how it handled a customer whom it had charged a "Skip the Pump" fee, which allows renters to pay a premium for Hertz to refill the tank for them. But of course, this customer's rented Tesla Model 3 didn't use gas — it draws power from a battery — and Hertz has a separate, flat fee for EV recharges. Nevertheless, the customer was charged $277.39 despite returning the car with the exact same charge they left with, and Hertz refused to refund it until after our story ran. It's no isolated incident either, as other customers have written in to inform us that it happened to them, too....

Evan Froehlich returned the rental at 21 percent charge, expecting to pay a flat $25 recharge fee. (It's ordinarily $35, but Hertz's loyalty program discounts it.) To Froehlich's surprise, he was hit with a $340.97 "Skip the Pump" fee, which can be applied after returning a car if it's not requested beforehand. He says Hertz's customer service was difficult to reach, and that it took making a ruckus on social media to get Hertz's attention. In the end, a Hertz representative was able to review the charge and have it reversed....

A March 2023 Facebook post documenting a similar case indicates this has been happening for more than a year.
After renting a Tesla Model 3, another customer even got a $475.19 "fuel charge," according to the article — in addition to a $25 charging fee: They also faced a $125.01 "rebill" for using the Supercharger network during their rental, which other Hertz customers have expressed surprise and frustration with. Charging costs can vary, but a 75-percent charge from a Supercharger will often cost in the region of just $15.

"$5,000 in cash had been withdrawn from my checking account — but not by me," writes journalist Linda Matchan in the Boston Globe. A police station manager reviewed footage from the bank — which was 200 miles away — and deduced that "someone had actually come into the bank and spoken to a teller, presented a driver's license, and then correctly answered some authentication questions to validate the account..." "You're pitting a teller against a national crime syndicate with massive resources behind them," says Paul Benda, executive vice president for risk, fraud, and cybersecurity at the American Bankers Association. "They're very well-funded, well-resourced criminal gangs doing this at an industrial scale."
The reporter writes that "For the past two years, I've worked to determine exactly who and what lay behind this crime..." [N]ow I had something new to worry about: Fraudsters apparently had a driver's license with my name on it... "Forget the fake IDs adolescents used to get into bars," says Georgia State's David Maimon, who is also head of fraud insights at SentiLink, a company that works with institutions across the United States to support and solve their fraud and risk issues. "Nowadays fraudsters are using sophisticated software and capable printers to create virtually impossible-to-detect fake IDs." They're able to create synthetic identities, combining legitimate personal information, such as a name and date of birth, with a nine-digit number that either looks like a Social Security number or is a real, stolen one. That ID can then be used to open financial accounts, apply for a bank or car loan, or for some other dodgy purpose that could devastate their victims' financial lives.



And there's a complex supply chain underpinning it all — "a whole industry on the dark web," says Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit that helps victims undo the damage wrought by identity crime. It starts with the suppliers, Maimon told me — "the people who steal IDs, bring them into the market, and manufacture them. There's the producers who take the ID and fake driver's licenses and build the facade to make it look like they own the identity — trying to create credit reports for the synthetic identities, for example, or printing fake utility bills." Then there are the distributors who sell them in the dark corners of the web or the street or through text messaging apps, and finally the customers who use them and come from all walks of life. "We're seeing females and males and people with families and a lot of adolescents, because social media plays a very important role in introducing them to this world," says Maimon, whose team does surveillance of criminals' activities and interactions on the dark web. "In this ecosystem, folks disclose everything they do."
The reporter writes that "It's horrifying to discover, as I have recently, that someone has set up a tech company that might not even be real, listing my home as its principal address."

Two and a half months after the theft the stolen $5,000 was back in their bank account — but it wasn't until a year later that the thief was identified. "The security video had been shared with New York's Capital Region Crime Analysis Center, where analysts have access to facial recognition technology, and was run through a database of booking photos. A possible match resulted.... She was already in custody elsewhere in New York... Evidently, Deborah was being sought by law enforcement in at least three New York counties. [All three cases involved bank-related identity fraud.]"

Deborah was finally charged with two separate felonies: grand larceny in the third degree for stealing property over $3,000, and identity theft. But Deborah missed her next two court dates, and disappeared. "She never came back to court, and now there were warrants for her arrest out of two separate courts."

After speaking to police officials the reporter concludes "There was a good chance she was only doing the grunt work for someone else, maybe even a domestic or foreign-organized crime syndicate, and then suffering all the consequences."

The UK minister of state for security even says that "in some places people are literally captured and used as unwilling operators for fraudsters."

Starting this week millions will see AI-generated answers in Google's search results by default. But the announcement Tuesday at Google's annual developer conference suggests a future that's "not without its risks, both to users and to Google itself," argues the Washington Post: For years, Google has been shielded for liability for linking users to bad, harmful or illegal information by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. But legal experts say that shield probably won't apply when its AI answers search questions directly. "As we all know, generative AIs hallucinate," said James Grimmelmann, professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech. "So when Google uses a generative AI to summarize what webpages say, and the AI gets it wrong, Google is now the source of the harmful information," rather than just the distributor of it...

Adam Thierer, senior fellow at the nonprofit free-market think tank R Street, worries that innovation could be throttled if Congress doesn't extend Section 230 to cover AI tools. "As AI is integrated into more consumer-facing products, the ambiguity about liability will haunt developers and investors," he predicted. "It is particularly problematic for small AI firms and open-source AI developers, who could be decimated as frivolous legal claims accumulate." But John Bergmayer, legal director for the digital rights nonprofit Public Knowledge, said there are real concerns that AI answers could spell doom for many of the publishers and creators that rely on search traffic to survive — and which AI, in turn, relies on for credible information. From that standpoint, he said, a liability regime that incentivizes search engines to continue sending users to third-party websites might be "a really good outcome."

Meanwhile, some lawmakers are looking to ditch Section 230 altogether. [Last] Sunday, the top Democrat and Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a draft of a bill that would sunset the statute within 18 months, giving Congress time to craft a new liability framework in its place. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) argued that the law, which helped pave the way for social media and the modern internet, has "outlived its usefulness."

The tech industry trade group NetChoice [which includes Google, Meta, X, and Amazon] fired back on Monday that scrapping Section 230 would "decimate small tech" and "discourage free speech online."
The digital law professor points out Google has traditionally escaped legal liability by attributing its answers to specific sources — but it's not just Google that has to worry about the issue. The article notes that Microsoft's Bing search engine also supplies AI-generated answers (from Microsoft's Copilot). "And Meta recently replaced the search bar in Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp with its own AI chatbot."

The article also note sthat several U.S. Congressional committees are considering "a bevy" of AI bills...

Ars Technica looks at what happened after Google's answer to Amazon's cloud service "accidentally deleted a giant customer account for no reason..."

"[A]ccording to UniSuper's incident log, downtime started May 2, and a full restoration of services didn't happen until May 15." UniSuper, an Australian pension fund that manages $135 billion worth of funds and has 647,000 members, had its entire account wiped out at Google Cloud, including all its backups that were stored on the service... UniSuper's website is now full of must-read admin nightmare fuel about how this all happened. First is a wild page posted on May 8 titled "A joint statement from UniSuper CEO Peter Chun, and Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian...." Google Cloud is supposed to have safeguards that don't allow account deletion, but none of them worked apparently, and the only option was a restore from a separate cloud provider (shoutout to the hero at UniSuper who chose a multi-cloud solution)... The many stakeholders in the service meant service restoration wasn't just about restoring backups but also processing all the requests and payments that still needed to happen during the two weeks of downtime.

The second must-read document in this whole saga is the outage update page, which contains 12 statements as the cloud devs worked through this catastrophe. The first update is May 2 with the ominous statement, "You may be aware of a service disruption affecting UniSuper's systems...." Seven days after the outage, on May 9, we saw the first signs of life again for UniSuper. Logins started working for "online UniSuper accounts" (I think that only means the website), but the outage page noted that "account balances shown may not reflect transactions which have not yet been processed due to the outage...." May 13 is the first mention of the mobile app beginning to work again. This update noted that balances still weren't up to date and that "We are processing transactions as quickly as we can." The last update, on May 15, states, "UniSuper can confirm that all member-facing services have been fully restored, with our retirement calculators now available again."

The joint statement and the outage updates are still not a technical post-mortem of what happened, and it's unclear if we'll get one. Google PR confirmed in multiple places it signed off on the statement, but a great breakdown from software developer Daniel Compton points out that the statement is not just vague, it's also full of terminology that doesn't align with Google Cloud products. The imprecise language makes it seem like the statement was written entirely by UniSuper.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader swm for sharing the news.

After Adobe threatened legal action, the Delta Emulator said it'll abandon its current logo for a different, yet-to-be-revealed mark. The issue centers around Delta's stylized letter "D", which the digital media giant says is too similar to its stylized letter "A". The Verge reports: On May 7th, Adobe's lawyers reached out to Delta with a firm but kindly written request to go find a different icon, an email that didn't contain an explicit threat or even use the word infringement -- it merely suggested that Delta might "not wish to confuse consumers or otherwise violate Adobe's rights or the law." But Adobe didn't wait for a reply. On May 8th, one day later, Testut got another email from Apple that suggested his app might be at risk because Adobe had reached out to allege Delta was infringing its intellectual property rights.

"We responded to both Apple and Adobe explaining our icon was a stylized Greek letter delta -- not an A -- but that we would update the Delta logo anyway to avoid confusion," Testut tells us. The icon you're seeing on the App Store now is just a temporary one, he says, as the team is still working on a new logo. "Both the App Store and AltStore versions have been updated with this temporary icon, but the plan is to update them to the final updated logo with Delta 1.6 once it's finished."

In what's marked as an EU first, the French government has blocked TikTok in its territory of New Caledonia amid widespread pro-independence protests. Politico reports: A French draft law, passed Monday, would let citizens vote in local elections after 10 years' residency in New Caledonia, prompting opposition from independence activists worried it will dilute the representation of indigenous people. The violent demonstrations that have ensued in the South Pacific island of 270,000 have killed at least five people and injured hundreds. In response to the protests, the government suspended the popular video-sharing app -- owned by Beijing-based ByteDance and favored by young people -- as part of state-of-emergency measures alongside the deployment of troops and an initial 12-day curfew.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal didn't detail the reasons for shutting down the platform. The local telecom regulator began blocking the app earlier on Wednesday. "It is regrettable that an administrative decision to suspend TikTok's service has been taken on the territory of New Caledonia, without any questions or requests to remove content from the New Caledonian authorities or the French government," a TikTok spokesperson said. "Our security teams are monitoring the situation very closely and ensuring that our platform remains safe for our users. We are ready to engage in discussions with the authorities."

Digital rights NGO Quadrature du Net on Friday contested the TikTok suspension with France's top administrative court over a "particularly serious blow to freedom of expression online." A growing number of authoritarian regimes worldwide have resorted to internet shutdowns to stifle dissent. This unexpected -- and drastic -- decision by France's center-right government comes amid a rise in far-right activism in Europe and a regression on media freedom. "France's overreach establishes a dangerous precedent across the globe. It could reinforce the abuse of internet shutdowns, which includes arbitrary blocking of online platforms by governments around the world," said Eliska Pirkova, global freedom of expression lead at Access Now.

New submitter txyoji shares a report: Enterprise workplace collaboration platform Slack has sparked a privacy backlash with the revelation that it has been scraping customer data, including messages and files, to develop new AI and ML models. By default, and without requiring users to opt-in, Slack said its systems have been analyzing customer data and usage information (including messages, content and files) to build AI/ML models to improve the software.

The company insists it has technical controls in place to block Slack from accessing the underlying content and promises that data will not lead across workplaces but, despite these assurances, corporate Slack admins are scrambling to opt-out of the data scraping. This line in Slack's communication sparked a social media controversy with the realization that content in direct messages and other sensitive content posted to Slack was being used to develop AI/ML models and that opting out world require sending e-mail requests: "If you want to exclude your Customer Data from Slack global models, you can opt out. To opt out, please have your org, workspace owners or primary owner contact our Customer Experience team at feedback@slack.com with your workspace/org URL and the subject line 'Slack global model opt-out request'. We will process your request and respond once the opt-out has been completed."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An Arizona woman has been accused of helping generate millions of dollars for North Korea's ballistic missile program by helping citizens of that country land IT jobs at US-based Fortune 500 companies. Christina Marie Chapman, 49, of Litchfield Park, Arizona, raised $6.8 million in the scheme, federal prosecutors said in an indictment unsealed Thursday. Chapman allegedly funneled the money to North Korea's Munitions Industry Department, which is involved in key aspects of North Korea's weapons program, including its development of ballistic missiles. Part of the alleged scheme involved Chapman and co-conspirators compromising the identities of more than 60 people living in the US and using their personal information to get North Koreans IT jobs across more than 300 US companies.

As another part of the alleged conspiracy, Chapman operated a "laptop farm" at one of her residences to give the employers the impression the North Korean IT staffers were working from within the US; the laptops were issued by the employers. By using proxies and VPNs, the overseas workers appeared to be connecting from US-based IP addresses. Chapman also received employees' paychecks at her home, prosecutors said. Federal prosecutors said that Chapman and three North Korean IT workers -- using the aliases of Jiho Han, Chunji Jin, Haoran Xu, and others -- had been working since at least 2020 to plan a remote-work scheme. In March of that year, prosecutors said, an individual messaged Chapman on LinkedIn and invited her to "be the US face" of their company. From August to November of 2022, the North Korean IT workers allegedly amassed guides and other information online designed to coach North Koreans on how to write effective cover letters and resumes and falsify US Permanent Resident Cards.

Under the alleged scheme, the foreign workers developed "fictitious personas and online profiles to match the job requirements" and submitted fake documents to the Homeland Security Department as part of an employment eligibility check. Chapman also allegedly discussed with co-conspirators about transferring the money earned from their work. Chapman was arrested Wednesday. It wasn't immediately known when she or Didenko were scheduled to make their first appearance in court. If convicted, Chapman faces 97.5 years in prison, and Didenko faces up to 67.5 years.

In a press release today, the best music player of the 1990s announced that it'll open up its source code to developers worldwide. "Winamp will open up its code for the player used on Windows, enabling the entire community to participate in its development," said the company. "This is an invitation to global collaboration, where developers worldwide can contribute their expertise, ideas, and passion to help this iconic software evolve."

Alexandre Saboundjian, CEO of Winamp, explains: "This is a decision that will delight millions of users around the world. Our focus will be on new mobile players and other platforms. We will be releasing a new mobile player at the beginning of July. Still, we don't want to forget the tens of millions of users who use the software on Windows and will benefit from thousands of developers' experience and creativity. Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt, written by Mike Masnick: If you're a fan of chaos, well, the TikTok ban situation is providing plenty of chaos to follow. Ever since the US government made it clear it was seriously going to move forward with the obviously unconstitutional and counterproductive plan to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok or have the app effectively banned from the U.S., various rich people have been stepping up with promises to buy the app. There was former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin with plans to buy it. Then there was "mean TV investor, who wants you to forget his sketchy history" Kevin O'Leary with his own TikTok buyout plans. I'm sure there have been other rich dudes as well, though strikingly few stories of actual companies interested in purchasing TikTok.

But now there's another billionaire to add to the pile: billionaire real estate/property mogul Frank McCourt (who has had some scandals in his own history) has had an interesting second act over the last few years as a big believer in decentralized social media. He created and funded Project Liberty, which has become deeply involved in a number of efforts to create infrastructure for decentralized social media, including its own Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSTP).

Over the past few years, I've had a few conversations with people involved in Project Liberty and related projects. Their hearts are in the right place in wanting to rethink the internet in a manner that empowers users over big companies, even if I don't always agree with their approach (he also frequently seems to surround himself with all sorts of tech haters, who have somewhat unrealistic visions of the world). Either way, McCourt and Project Liberty have now announced a plan to bid on TikTok. They plan to merge it into his decentralization plans. "Frank McCourt, Founder of Project Liberty and Executive Chairman of McCourt Global, today announced that Project Liberty is organizing a bid to acquire the popular social media platform TikTok in the U.S., with the goal of placing people and data empowerment at the center of the platform's design and purpose," reads a press release from Project Liberty.

"Working in consultation with Guggenheim Securities, the investment banking and capital markets business of Guggenheim Partners, and Kirkland & Ellis, one of the world's largest law firms, as well as world-renowned technologists, academics, community leaders, parents and engaged citizens, this bid for TikTok offers an innovative, alternative vision for the platform's infrastructure -- one that allows people to reclaim agency over their digital identities and data by proposing to migrate the platform to a new digital open-source protocol. In launching the bid, McCourt and his partners are seizing this opportunity to return control and value back into the hands of individuals and provide Americans with a meaningful voice, choice, and stake in the future of the web."

Last month, researchers from the University of Washington started conducting an experiment on a decommissioned naval ship in Alameda to test if spraying salt water into the air could brighten clouds and cool the planet. However, their project was forced to stop this month after the city got word of what was going on. SFGate reports: According to a city press release, scientists were ordered to halt the experiment because it violated Alameda's lease with the USS Hornet, the aircraft carrier from which researchers were spraying saltwater into the air using "a machine resembling a snowmaker." The news was first reported by the Alameda Post. "City staff are working with a team of biological and hazardous materials consultants to independently evaluate the health and environmental safety of this particular experiment," the press release states. Specifically, chemicals present in the experiment's aerosol spray are being evaluated to study whether or not they pose any threats to humans, animals or the environment. So far, there isn't any evidence that they do, the city stated.

The prospect of a city-conducted review was not unexpected, the University of Washington said in a statement shared with SFGATE. "In fact, the CAARE (Coastal Aerosol Research and Engagement) facility is designed to help regulators, community members and others engage with the research closely, and we consider the current interactions with the city to be an integral part of that process," the statement reads. "We are happy to support their review and it has been a highly constructive process so far." The marine cloud brightening (MCB) technique involves spraying fine particles of sea salt into the atmosphere from ships or specialized machines. These sea salt particles are chosen because they are a natural source of cloud-forming aerosols and can increase the number of cloud droplets, making the clouds more reflective. The particles sprayed are extremely small, about 1/1000th the width of a human hair, ensuring they remain suspended in the air and interact with cloud droplets effectively.

By reflecting more sunlight, these brightened clouds can reduce the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface, leading to localized cooling. If implemented on a large scale, this cooling effect could potentially offset some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases.

You can learn more about the experiment here.

Police officers in Britain could be armed with Ghostbusters-style devices that fire electromagnetic rays to shut down the engines of ebikes being used in a crime. From a report: Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), said the weapon was in development and could be months away from being available, though it is expected to be longer than that. He said it would be housed in a backpack, reminiscent of the equipment used in the Ghostbusters series of movies. It could tackle crime linked to newer vehicles such as electric bikes and electric scooters.

The device is being developed with the Defence Science and Technology Lab, which is overseen by the Ministry of Defence, alongside other technological innovations that British police are hoping to use. It would fire an electromagnetic pulse at a vehicle that an officer wants to stop because the rider is suspected of involvement in a crime. The electromagnetic weapon works by tricking the engine into thinking it is overheating, which shuts down the engine and brings the vehicle to a stop. It requires a line of sight to work, Stephens said.

Stephens told a media briefing: "Basically, it interferes with the electric motor, to trick the electric motor into thinking it is overheating. It sends a signal to confuse the electric motor. All these electric motors apparently have an inbuilt safety system that if it thinks it's overheating, it shuts down. At the minute, it's like a ginormous backpack." The equipment was demonstrated to police leaders at the Farnborough technology show earlier this year. Stephens said: "They were also telling me it has the potential to be useful with normal combustion engine vehicles."

In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Frank Pallone Jr (D-N.J.) made their case for why Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has "outlived its usefulness." Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects online platforms from liability for user-generated content, allowing them to moderate content without being treated as publishers.

"Unfortunately, Section 230 is now poisoning the healthy online ecosystem it once fostered. Big Tech companies are exploiting the law to shield them from any responsibility or accountability as their platforms inflict immense harm on Americans, especially children. Congress's failure to revisit this law is irresponsible and untenable," the lawmakers wrote. The Hill reports: Rodgers and Pallone argued that rolling back the protections on Big Tech companies would hold them accountable for the material posted on their platforms. "These blanket protections have resulted in tech firms operating without transparency or accountability for how they manage their platforms. This means that a social-media company, for example, can't easily be held responsible if it promotes, amplifies or makes money from posts selling drugs, illegal weapons or other illicit content," they wrote.

The lawmakers said they were unveiling legislation (PDF) to sunset Section 230. It would require Big Tech companies to work with Congress for 18 months to "evaluate and enact a new legal framework that will allow for free speech and innovation while also encouraging these companies to be good stewards of their platforms." "Our bill gives Big Tech a choice: Work with Congress to ensure the internet is a safe, healthy place for good, or lose Section 230 protections entirely," the lawmakers wrote.