"Nearly 2 million people protected their privacy by deleting their DNA from 23andMe after it declared bankruptcy in March," writes a Washington Post technology columnist.

"Now it's back with the same person in charge — and I still don't trust it." As of this week, genetic data from the more than 10 million remaining 23andMe customers has been formally sold to an organization called TTAM Research Institute for $305 million. That nonprofit is run by the person who co-founded and ran 23andMe, Anne Wojcicki. In a recent email to customers, the new 23andMe said it "will be operating with the same employees and privacy protocols that have protected your data." Never mind that Wojcicki and her privacy protocols are what put your DNA at risk in the first place...

The company is legally obligated to maintain and honor 23andMe's existing privacy policies, user consents and data protection measures. And as part of a settlement with states, TTAM also agreed to provide annual privacy reports to state regulators and set up a privacy board. But it hasn't agreed to take the fundamental step of asking for permission to acquire existing customers' genetic information. And it's leaving the door open to selling people's genes to the highest bidder again in the future...

Existing 23andMe customers have the right to delete their data or opt out of TTAM's research. But the new company is not asking for opt-in permission before it takes ownership of customers' DNA... Why does that matter? Because people who handed over the DNA 15 years ago, often to learn about their genetic ancestry, never imagined it might be used in this way now. Asking for new permission might significantly shrink the size (and value) of 23andMe's DNA database — but it would be the right thing to do given the rocky history. Neil M. Richards [the Washington University professor who served as privacy ombudsman for the bankruptcy court], pointed out that about a third of 23andMe customers haven't logged in for at least three years, so they may have no idea what is going on. Some 23andMe users never even clicked "agree" on a legal agreement that allowed their data to be sold like this; the word "bankruptcy" wasn't added to the company's privacy policy until 2022. And then there is an unknown number of deceased users who most certainly can't consent, but whose DNA still has an impact on their living genetic relatives...

[S]everal states have argued that their existing genetic privacy laws don't allow 23andMe to receive the information without getting permission from every single person. Virginia has an ongoing lawsuit over the issue, and the California attorney general's office told me it "will continue to fight to protect and vindicate the rights" of consumers....
Two more points of concern:

• "There is nothing in 23andMe's bankruptcy agreement or privacy statement to prevent TTAM from selling or transferring DNA to some other organization in the future."

• The article also notes a 2023 data breach affecting 6.9 million users, arguing "They haven't shown they can keep your data safe... 23andMe's financial struggles could make it hard to run a robust cybersecurity program."

ABC News reports: Dialogue heard on a cockpit voice recording indicates that the captain of the Air India flight that crashed in June, killing 260 people, may have turned off the fuel just after takeoff, prompting the first officer to panic, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited sources familiar with U.S. official's early assessment... The president of the Federation of Indian Pilots condemned the Wall Street Journal report, saying, "The preliminary report nowhere states that the pilots have moved the fuel control switches, and this has been corroborated by the CVR [cockpit voice recorder] recording."
But meanwhile "India on Monday ordered its airlines to examine fuel switches on several Boeing aircraft models," reports Reuters, "while South Korea ordered a similar measure on Tuesday, as scrutiny intensified of fuel switch locks at the centre of an investigation into a deadly Air India crash." The precautionary moves by the two countries and airlines in several others came despite the planemaker and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration assuring airlines and regulators in recent days that the fuel switch locks on Boeing jets are safe... [The preliminary report] noted a 2018 advisory from the FAA, which recommended, but did not mandate, operators of several Boeing models, including the 787, to inspect the locking feature of fuel cutoff switches to ensure they could not be moved accidentally... Some airlines around the world told Reuters they had been checking relevant switches since 2018 in accordance with the FAA advisory, including Australia's Qantas Airways. Others said they had made additional or new checks since the release of the preliminary report into the Air India crash.
The web site of India's Financial Express newspaper spoke to Mary Schiavo, who was Inspector General of America's Transportation Department from 1990 to 1996 (and is also a long-time critic of the FAA). The site notes Schiavo "rejected the claims of human error that a pilot downed the Ahmedabad to London flight by cutting off the fuel supply." Schiavo exclusively told FinancialExpress.com that this is not the first time fuel switch transitioned from "Run" to "Cutoff" on its own. It happened five years ago, too. "There was an All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight in 2019 in which the 787 aircraft did this itself, while the flight was on final approach. No pilot input cutting off the fuel whatsoever," Schiavo told FinancialExpress.com... "The investigation revealed the plane software made the 787 think it was on the ground and the Thrust Control Malfunction Accommodation System cut the fuel to the engines," she told FinancialExpress.com, before adding, "The pilots never touched the fuel cutoff..." Both engines flamed out immediately after the pilot deployed the thrust reversers for landing. The aircraft, which was also a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, was towed away from the runway by the authorities, and no injuries were reported.

UK Civil Aviation Authority, four weeks before the crash, had warned about similar fuel system issues on Boeing aircraft [on May 15, 2025]. "The FAA has issued an Airworthiness Directive addressing a potential unsafe condition affecting fuel shutoff valves installed on Boeing aircraft," the UK regulator's notice read, listing the B737, B757, B767, B777 and B787...

Thrust Control Malfunction Accommodation informs FADEC [a digital computer] about whether the aircraft is on the ground or in the air, and if it believes the aircraft is on the ground, it may automatically throttle back the engines, without the pilot's input.
Reuters notes that the Air India crash preliminary report "said maintenance records showed that the throttle control module, which includes the fuel switches, was replaced in 2019 and 2023 on the plane involved in the crash."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader wired_parrot for sharing the news.

"The U.S. is absolutely facing the most serious Chinese hacking ever." That's what the Washington Post was told by a China-focused consultant at security company SentinelOne: Undeterred by recent indictments alleging widespread cyberespionage against American agencies, journalists and infrastructure targets, Chinese hackers are hitting a wider range of targets and battling harder to stay inside once detected, seven current and former U.S. officials said in interviews. Hacks from suspected Chinese government actors detected by the security firm CrowdStrike more than doubled from 2023 to more than 330 last year and continued to climb as the new administration took over, the company said... Although the various Chinese hacking campaigns seem to be led by different government agencies and have different goals, all benefit from new techniques and from Beijing's introduction of a less constrained system for cyber offense, the officials and outside researchers told The Washington Post... Chinese intelligence, military and security agencies previously selected targets and tasked their own employees with breaking in, they said. But the Chinese government decided to take a more aggressive approach by allowing private industry to conduct cyberattacks and hacking campaigns on their own, U.S. officials said.

The companies are recruiting top hackers who discover previously unknown, or "zero-day," flaws in software widely used in the United States. Then the companies search for where the vulnerable programs are installed, hack a great many of them at once, and then sell access to multiple Chinese government customers and other security companies. That hacking-for-hire approach creates hundreds of U.S. victims instead of a few, making it hard to block attacks and to decide which were China's key targets and which were unintentionally caught in the hacks, an FBI official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to follow agency practices... "The result of that incentive structure is that there is significantly more hacking...."

China has mastered the ability to move undetected through networks of compromised U.S. devices, so that the final connection to a target appears to be an ordinary domestic connection. That makes it easy to get around technology that blocks overseas links and puts it outside the purview of the National Security Agency, which by law must avoid scrutinizing most domestic transmissions. Beijing is increasingly focused on hacking software and security vendors that provide access to many customers at once, the FBI official said. Once access is obtained, the hackers typically add new email and collaboration accounts that look legitimate... Beyond the increased government collaboration with China's private security sector is occasional collaborating with criminal groups, said Ken Dunham, an analyst at the security firm Qualys.
The article notes that China's penetration of U.S. telecom carriers "is still not fully contained, according to the current and former officials." But in addition, the group behind that attack "has more recently shown up inside core communications infrastructure in Europe, according to John Carlin, a former top national security official in the Justice Department who represents some U.S. victims of the group." And documents leaked last year from a security contractor that works with the Chinese military and other government groups "described contracts and targets in 20 countries, with booty including Indian immigration data, logs of calls in South Korea, and detailed information on roads in Taiwan.

"It also detailed prices for some services, such as $25,000 for promised remote access to an iPhone, payment disputes with government customers and employee gripes about long hours..."

The Independent notes a remarkable-if-true figure that's being bandied around this week.

Meta "started making these, like, giant offers to a lot of people on our team," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told his brother Jack on his podcast. "You know, like, $100 million signing bonuses, more than that [in] compensation per year... I'm really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on that."

Previous reports have also suggested that Meta is targeting employees at Google DeepMind, offering similar levels of compensation. Some of these efforts appear to have been successful, with DeepMind researcher Jack Rae joining Meta's 'Superintelligence' team earlier this month...

During the podcast, which was published on Tuesday, Mr Altman also gave details about future AI products that OpenAI is hoping to build, claiming that they will enable "crazy new social experiences" and "virtual employees". The most important breakthrough over the next decade, he said, would involve radical new discoveries powered by AI. "The thing that I think will be the most impactful in that five-to-10 year timeframe is AI will actually discover new science," he said.
The Washington Post notes that Zuckerberg "responded to recent reports of his compensation offers in an interview posted by the Information on YouTube on Tuesday, saying that 'a lot of the numbers specifically have been inaccurate" but acknowledging there is "an absolute premium for the best and most talented people." Zuckerberg's recent hires and other comments this week suggest he's not taking any chances of being left behind. He announced plans for a giant data center campus large enough to obscure Manhattan to power future AI projects by his superintelligence team.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: California Forever announced on Thursday plans to build a massive manufacturing park called Solano Foundry, the newest addition to its master-planned "utopian" city backed by a group of Silicon Valley billionaires. Solano Foundry is 2,100 acres that can host 40 million square feet of advanced tech manufacturing space. The manufacturing park will be built as part of its planned walkable city with over 175,000 homes, CEO Jan Sramek said at the Reindustrialize conference in Detroit.

Sramek tweeted that U.S. manufacturers can't win by "building factories off of random freeway exits in the middle of nowhere. The best people don't want to work there." This site will offer expedited permitting, transportation for finished goods, and plenty of power from renewable energy, he said. The hope is that it will attract hardware, engineering, and AI talent from relatively nearby Silicon Valley. Solano County is about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco.

Google has filed a lawsuit to dismantle the sprawling Badbox 2.0 botnet, which infected over 10 million Android devices with pre-installed malware. Badbox 2.0 "is already the largest known botnet of internet-connected TV devices, and it grows each day. It has harmed millions of victims in the United States and around the world and threatens many more," Google said in its complaint. SecurityWeek reports: The internet giant cautions that, while it has been used mainly for fraud, the botnet could be used for more harmful types of cybercrime, such as ransomware or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In addition to pre-installing the malware on devices, Badbox 2.0's operators also tricked users into installing infected applications that provided them with further access to their personal devices, Google says. As part of their operation, the individuals behind Badbox 2.0 sold access to the infected devices to be used as residential proxies, and conducted ad fraud schemes by abusing these devices to create fake ad views or to exploit pay-per-click compensation models, the company continues. The internet giant also points out that this is the second global botnet the perpetrators have built, after the initial Badbox botnet was disrupted by German law enforcement in 2023.

According to Google, Badbox 2.0 is operated by multiple cybercrime groups from China, each having a different role in maintaining the botnet, such as establishing infrastructure, developing and pre-installing the malware on devices, and conducting fraud. "The BadBox 2.0 Enterprise includes several connected threat actor groups that design and implement complex criminal schemes targeting internet-connected devices both before and after the consumer receives the device," Google says. "While each member of the Enterprise plays a distinct role, they all collaborate to execute the BadBox 2.0 Scheme. All of the threat actor groups are connected to one another through the BadBox 2.0 shared C2 infrastructure and historical and current business ties," the company continues.

Christine Hunsicker, founder of the failed "Clothing-as-a-Service" startup CaaStle, has been criminally charged with defrauding investors of over $300 million by falsifying financials and misrepresenting the company's health. CNBC reports: Authorities said Christine Hunsicker, 48, of Lafayette, New Jersey, promoted CaaStle to investors as a more than $1.4 billion "Clothing-as-a-Service" business that helped companies rent apparel to consumers with an option to buy, despite knowing it was financially distressed and short of cash. The alleged fraud spanned six years starting in 2019, three years after the Princeton University alumna was named one of Inc magazine's "Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs" and Crain's New York Business' "40 Under 40."

Hunsicker was charged in a six-count indictment with wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, making false statements to a bank and aggravated identity theft. She turned herself in to authorities, and could face decades in prison if convicted. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a related civil lawsuit. In a joint statement, Hunsicker's lawyers Michael Levy and Anna Skotko said the indictment presented "an incomplete and very distorted picture," despite their client being "fully cooperative and transparent" with prosecutors. "There is much more to this story, and we look forward to telling it," the lawyers added.

Authorities said Hunsicker falsified CaaStle's financial statements and bank records to raise capital. This included alleged representations that CaaStle earned $66.3 million on revenue of $439.9 million in 2023, when it actually lost $81 million on revenue of $15.7 million. Hunsicker was also accused of falsely telling investors their money would go toward buying discounted shares from existing shareholders who needed liquidity, including after the 2022 collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Prosecutors said Hunsicker fraudulently raised more than $275 million for CaaStle and $30 million for a related venture, P180.

An anonymous reader shares a column: I can't open LinkedIn without seeing a new post from a Microsoft employee who lost their job in the company's latest round of layoffs. Around 15,000 jobs have been eliminated at Microsoft over the past couple months -- the biggest cuts at the company in more than a decade.

I've spoken to more than a dozen Microsoft employees in recent weeks, and everyone is concerned about the company's direction in this AI era. Morale is at an all-time low, and employees are worried that regular layoffs are simply the new normal.

Sources tell me that Microsoft's leadership team had the choice between reducing investment in AI infrastructure for the upcoming financial year or deeply cutting its headcount and operating expenses. It's very clear what route Microsoft chose.

Delta Air Lines plans for 20% of its ticket prices to be individually determined using AI by the end of this year, up from the current 3% of fares that are AI-determined. President Glen Hauenstein told investors last week the airline's long-term strategy aims to eliminate static pricing altogether in favor of personalized fares calculated by AI algorithms.

The AI pricing pilot program, which has tripled in scope over nine months, has produced "amazingly favorable unit revenues," according to the airline.

You're not alone if you think the move is problematic. Consumer Watchdog analyst Justin Kloczko told Fortune that the airline is "basically hacking our brains," and Senator Ruben Gallego called Delta's practice "predatory pricing."

India has achieved 50% of its installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel sources -- five years ahead of its 2030 target under the Paris Agreement, signalling accelerating momentum in the country's clean energy transition. From a report: The announcement comes as India's renewable power output rose at its fastest pace since 2022 in the first half of 2025, while coal-fired generation declined nearly 3%. Fossil fuels still accounted for over two-thirds of the increase in power generation last year. India plans to expand coal-fired capacity by 80 GW by 2032 to meet rising demand.

"The Luxembourg-based satellite company SES has now completed its acquisition of the European-based satellite company Intelsat, giving the combined company 120 active satellites in a variety of low and high Earth orbits," writes longtime Slashdot reader schwit1. "Both companies are long established, with Intelsat initially founded in the mid-1960s as a consortium of 23 nations aimed at launching the first geosynchronous communications satellites over the Atlantic and Pacific serving most of the Old World and linked to the New. The merger is an attempt by both companies to compete with the new low-orbit constellations of SpaceX, Amazon, and from China." From a press release: With a world-class network including approximately 90 geostationary (GEO), nearly 30 medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites, strategic access to low earth orbit (LEO) satellites, and an extensive ground network, SES can now deliver connectivity solutions utilizing complementary spectrum bands including C-, Ku-, Ka-, Military Ka-, X-band, and Ultra High Frequency. The expanded capabilities of the combined company will enable it to deliver premium-quality services and tailored solutions to its customers. The company's assets and networks, once fully integrated, will put SES in a strong competitive position to better serve the evolving needs of its customers including governments, aviation, maritime, and media across the globe. "Our focus is clear: to grow, to lead in high-potential markets, and to shape the future of our industry," said SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh in a statement. "This is a long-term play, and we are building with the future in mind -- growing year after year, expanding our capabilities, and creating lasting value for our customers and shareholders alike."

Fierce Network notes that the FCC is preparing to auction upper C-band spectrum (3.98-4.2 GHz), previously cleared in part by SES and Intelsat and now eyed for 5G expansion by Verizon and AT&T. With new legislative backing and industry pressure, including from CTIA and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, the agency is being urged to act quickly to auction and open this spectrum for full-power wireless use.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Mark Zuckerberg and current and former directors and officers of Meta Platforms agreed on Thursday to settle claims seeking $8 billion for the damage they allegedly caused the company by allowing repeated violations of Facebook users' privacy, a lawyer for the shareholders told a Delaware judge on Thursday. The parties did not disclose details of the settlement and defense lawyers did not address the judge, Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery. McCormick adjourned the trial just as it was to enter its second day and she congratulated the parties. The plaintiffs' lawyer, Sam Closic, said the agreement just came together quickly.

Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who is a defendant in the trial and a Meta director, was scheduled to testify on Thursday. Shareholders of Meta sued Zuckerberg, Andreessen and other former company officials including former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg in hopes of holding them liable for billions of dollars in fines and legal costs the company paid in recent years. The Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion in 2019 after finding that it failed to comply with a 2012 agreement with the regulator to protect users' data. The shareholders wanted the 11 defendants to use their personal wealth to reimburse the company. The defendants denied the allegations, which they called "extreme claims." "This settlement may bring relief to the parties involved, but it's a missed opportunity for public accountability," said Jason Kint, the head of Digital Content Next, a trade group for content providers.

"Facebook has successfully remade the 'Cambridge Analytica' scandal about a few bad actors rather than an unraveling of its entire business model of surveillance capitalism and the reciprocal, unbridled sharing of personal data. That reckoning is now left unresolved."

Intel is laying off more than 5,000 employees across four states, according to updated Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings. From a report: Most of the cuts are happening in California and Oregon. Intel more than doubled its layoff estimates for Santa Clara and Folsom to a total of 1,935 affected employees, according to California WARN filings. The cuts began taking place in Folsom on July 11, and in Santa Clara on July 15.

Scale AI is laying off 14% of its workforce and 500 contractors as part of a major restructuring just weeks after Meta bought a 49% stake and absorbed its CEO into a new superintelligence lab. The Verge reports: Jason Droege, CEO of Scale AI, sent an email to all Scale employees today, which was viewed by The Verge. Droege said he plans to restructure several parts of Scale's generative AI business and organize it from 16 pods to "the five most impactful": code, languages, experts, experimental, and audio. The company will also reorganize its go-to-market team into a single "demand generation" team that will have four pods, each covering a specific set of customers.

"The reasons for these changes are straightforward: we ramped up our GenAI capacity too quickly over the past year," Droege wrote. "While that felt like the right decision at the time, it's clear this approach created inefficiencies and redundancies. We created too many layers, excessive bureaucracy, and unhelpful confusion about the team's mission. Shifts in market demand also required us to re-examine our plans and refine our approach."

Droege said that he believes the changes to the company will make it more able to adapt to market shifts, serve existing customers, and win back customers that have "slowed down" work with Scale. He also said that the company would deprioritize generative AI projects with less growth potential. "We remain a well-resourced, well-funded company," he wrote. Scale's generative AI business unit will have an all-hands meeting tomorrow, followed by a company-wide meeting on July 18th.

Osborne said that Scale plans to increase investment and hire hundreds of new employees in areas like enterprise, public sector, and international public sector, in the second half of 2025 and that severance has been paid out to impacted roles. "We're streamlining our data business to help us move faster and deliver even better data solutions to our GenAI customers," he said.

OpenAI has added Google Cloud as a provider for ChatGPT and its API, expanding beyond Microsoft to address growing demand for computing power. CNBC reports: OpenAI has added Google to a list of suppliers, specifying that ChatGPT and its application programming interface will use the Google Cloud Platform, as well as Microsoft, CoreWeave and Oracle. The announcement amounts to a win for Google, whose cloud unit is younger and smaller than Amazon's and Microsoft's. Google also has cloud business with Anthropic, which was established by former OpenAI executives. The Google infrastructure will run in the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.

The abstract of a paper featured on NBER: Most U.S. innovation output originates from firms that operate R&D facilities across multiple local markets. We study how this geographic structure influences aggregate innovation and growth, and whether it is socially optimal. First, we develop an endogenous growth model featuring multi-market innovative firms that generate knowledge spillovers to geographically proximate firms. In equilibrium, firms may operate in too few or too many local markets, depending on how sensitive are the local spillovers they generate to their local size. Second, to quantify these effects, we link the model to data on firms' R&D locations, patents, and citation networks. Using an event-study design, we show that firms' spatial expansion increases spillovers to other firms and estimate how these spillovers depend on a firm's local footprint. Our estimates imply that U.S. innovative firms operate in too few markets relative to the social optimum. Third, using quantitative counterfactuals, we find that policies promoting broader spatial scope yield larger welfare gains than standard R&D subsidies. Moreover, unlike R&D subsidies, such policies can also reduce regional inequality.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google will now let everyone in the US call local businesses using AI. The feature, which is now available in Search, allows you to use AI for pricing or availability information without having to talk on the phone.

Google first started testing this feature in January, and it's still only available for certain kinds of businesses, like pet groomers, dry cleaners, and auto shops. When you search for one of these services, like a pet groomer, Google will display a new "have AI check pricing" prompt beneath the business listing.

Amazon.com marked its 30th anniversary Wednesday, three decades after Jeff Bezos launched the company as an online bookstore promising "one million titles" from Seattle. The e-commerce giant began in 1995 with Bezos, his then-wife MacKenzie Scott, and seven employees.

The company now employs 1.5 million people and carries a market capitalization exceeding $2 trillion. Amazon has expanded from books into groceries through its $13.7 billion Whole Foods acquisition, cloud computing via Amazon Web Services, and entertainment with Prime Video.

Digital tokens designed to track popular stocks have suffered extreme price deviations since launching two weeks ago, with an Amazon-tracking token briefly spiking to more than 100 times the underlying stock's closing price. The token AMZNX hit $23,781.22 on crypto trading platform Jupiter on July 3, while Amazon shares had closed the previous day around $200.

A similar Apple-tracking token jumped to $236.72 on July 3, representing a 12% premium to the actual stock price. Companies including Robinhood, Kraken, Gemini and Bybit launched these blockchain-based versions of U.S. stocks in late June for non-U.S. customers. Robinhood is facing scrutiny from Lithuania's central bank after launching tokens tied to OpenAI and SpaceX without permission from either company, prompting OpenAI to disavow the tokens on social media.

America's largest corporations are increasingly listing AI among the major risks they must disclose in formal financial filings, despite bullish statements in public about the potential business opportunities it offers. The Register: According to a report from research firm The Autonomy Institute, three-quarters of companies listed in the S&P 500 stock market index have updated their official risk disclosures to detail or expand upon mentions of AI-related risk factors during the past year.

The organization drew its findings from an analysis of Form 10-K filings that the top 500 companies submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in which they are required to outline any material risks that could negatively affect their business and its financial health.