According to lobby group ChargeUK, there were 930,000 electric car chargers in the UK at the end of June, with the majority residing in homes and at businesses. Only about 65,000 public chargers are available. The Guardian reports: The ChargeUK analysis showed that a new public charger was installed every 25 minutes in the spring quarter as companies raced to keep up with demand. Companies installed 5,100 public chargers during the second quarter of 2024, according to the data company Zapmap. [...] There are 1.1 million electric vehicles on UK roads, including 167,000 cars sold in the first half of this year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders lobby group. That is a 9% increase compared with the previous year, although the share of electric sales only increased marginally to 16.6%, as relatively higher upfront prices and rising interest rates deterred some buyers.

ChargeUK's analysis, which was carried out by the thinktank New AutoMotive, suggested that the private sector was confident it could meet a target set by the previous Conservative government of 300,000 public charge points by 2030. "In little more than a decade, the UK's charging sector has grown to become a major player in the green economy, providing the infrastructure that more than a million EV drivers rely on today and scaling fast to deliver the charging needed through to 2030 and beyond," said Vicky Read, the chief executive of ChargeUK.

Rite Aid, the third-largest U.S. drug store chain, reported it a ransomware attack that compromised the personal data of 2.2 million customers. The data exposed includes names, addresses, dates of birth, and driver's license numbers or other forms of government-issued ID from transactions between June 2017 and July 2018.

"On June 6, 2024, an unknown third party impersonated a company employee to compromise their business credentials and gain access to certain business systems," the company said in a filing. "We detected the incident within 12 hours and immediately launched an internal investigation to terminate the unauthorized access, remediate affected systems and ascertain if any customer data was impacted." Ars Technica's Dan Goodin reports: RansomHub, the name of a relatively new ransomware group, has taken credit for the attack, which it said yielded more than 10GB of customer data. RansomHub emerged earlier this year as a rebranded version of a group known as Knight. According to security firm Check Point, RansomHub became the most prevalent ransomware group following an international operation by law enforcement in May that took down much of the infrastructure used by rival ransomware group Lockbit.

On its dark web site, RansomHub said it was in advanced stages of negotiation with Rite Aid officials when the company suddenly cut off communications. A Rite Aid official didn't respond to questions sent by email. Rite Aid has also declined to say if the employee account compromised in the breach was protected by multifactor authentication.

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian had stark words for competing airlines that depend on selling low-priced tickets to stay alive. From a report: "You cannot, if you are on the lower end of the industry's food chain, continue to post losses, particularly given the health of the demand set we've seen over these last couple of years," Bastian said as Delta reported disappointing second-quarter financials and warned things could get even worse.

Airlines that can't break even "will not be given the opportunity to continue to run business models they have," he added. Bastian's comments came in response to a question about the potential for structural changes within the industry as many airlines struggle to remain profitable. [...] A big contributor to the lower profits was lower airfares and extra capacity, especially in economy class,

Amazon is now monitoring the hours corporate employees spend in the office. From a report: This move is intended to crack down on people who are trying to skirt the company's return-to-office policy, Business Insider has learned. Several teams across Amazon, including the retail and cloud-computing units, were told in recent months that a minimum of two hours per visit is required to count as office attendance, according to multiple screenshots of internal Slack messages obtained by BI and people familiar with the matter. Some teams have been told to stay at least six hours per visit.

Amazon's goal is to ramp up scrutiny of "coffee badging," some of the Slack messages said. Coffee badging refers to employees who badge in, get coffee, and leave the office shortly to satisfy their return-to-office mandate. Amazon started requiring office attendance for most corporate staffers three times a week last year, but it didn't have a minimum-hour obligation for each visit.

Russian cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky Lab, has told workers in its U.S.-based division that they are being laid off this week and that it is closing its U.S. business, Zero Day reported Monday, citing sources. From a report: The sudden move comes after the U.S. Commerce Department announced last month that it was banning the sale of Kaspersky software in the U.S. beginning July 20. The company has been selling its software here since 2005. Kaspersky confirmed the news to Zero Day, saying that beginning July 20 it will "gradually wind down" its U.S. operations and eliminate U.S.-based positions as a result of the new ban, despite initially vowing to fight the ban in court.

A small business selling washable swim diapers on Amazon is facing financial difficulties following a one-star review claiming they received a used, stained product. Paul and Rachelle Baron, owners of Beau & Belle Littles, say their once-thriving business has been severely impacted by the review, which remains on the site despite their appeals.

The incident, described in detail in a Bloomberg story, highlights ongoing concerns about Amazon's handling of returned items. While the company claims to inspect returns before resale, former employees suggest time constraints may lead to oversights. The Barons report being $600,000 in debt and unable to make a living from their business since the review. Amazon has not removed the review, despite the couple's repeated requests.

Cybercriminals are using Facebook business pages and advertisements to promote fake Windows themes that infect unsuspecting users with the SYS01 password-stealing malware. From a report: Trustwave researchers who observed the campaigns said the threat actors also promote fake downloads for pirated games and software, Sora AI, 3D image creator, and One Click Active. While using Facebook advertisements to push information-stealing malware is not new, the social media platform's massive reach makes these campaigns a significant threat.

The threat actors take out advertisements that promote Windows themes, free game downloads, and software activation cracks for popular applications, like Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and Windows. These advertisements are promoted through newly created Facebook business pages or by hijacking existing ones. When using hijacked Facebook pages, the threat actors rename them to suit the theme of their advertisement and to promote the downloads to the existing page members.

Two of the nation's major telecommunications companies are feuding over a plan to boost service for police, firefighters and other state and local agencies -- a move Verizon says would amount to a $14 billion gift to rival. From a report: AT&T and its allies are asking regulators to provide more wireless frequencies to FirstNet, a cellular network launched in 2017 to connect emergency responders and other public-sector groups. The Dallas-based telecom giant holds an exclusive 25-year contract to run the network for the federal FirstNet Authority, which oversees the project.

Rival telecom companies say the proposal would let AT&T's commercial business piggyback on those airwaves free. Verizon, which vies with FirstNet for public-safety contracts, called the proposal a giveaway of spectrum valued at around $14 billion that would give its competitor a "substantial windfall." T-Mobile US likewise urged regulators to avoid a "FirstNet takeover" of the spectrum. The carrier hasn't made its case as forcefully as Verizon, whose chief executive traveled to Washington twice in recent weeks to lobby regulators.

Alphabet, Google's parent company, is reportedly in advanced negotiations to acquire cloud security startup Wiz for approximately $23 billion, Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The potential deal, which would value Wiz at nearly double its most recent private valuation of $12 billion, underscores the growing importance of cybersecurity in Alphabet's enterprise strategy as it seeks to narrow the gap with cloud computing rivals such as Microsoft, Morgan Stanley said in a note.

Founded in January 2020, Wiz has quickly established itself as a leading player in the Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) space, utilizing an agentless approach to secure cloud application deployments throughout their lifecycle. The company's platform continuously assesses and prioritizes critical risks across various security domains, providing customers with a comprehensive view of their cloud security posture. Wiz has experienced rapid growth since its inception, with annual recurring revenue (ARR) exceeding $350 million as of January 2024, representing a year-over-year increase of over 75%. The company boasts an impressive client roster, with more than 40% of Fortune 100 companies among its customers, and has raised nearly $2 billion in funding to date.

If confirmed, the acquisition would mark Alphabet's largest to date, significantly expanding its footprint in the burgeoning cloud security market. The move follows previous security-focused acquisitions by the tech giant, including the $5.4 billion purchase of Mandiant in 2022 and the $500 million acquisition of Siemplify. Morgan Stanley adds that the potential acquisition could raise questions about Wiz's ability to maintain neutrality across multiple cloud platforms, potentially benefiting competitors such as Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike in the near term.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A basket of 27 large-cap AI stocks created by wealth manager and brokerage house Jefferies has surged 127% in value since ChatGPT's launch in late 2022, adding about $10 trillion in market cap. However, 2025 earnings forecasts for these companies have increased only 25% over the same period, Jefferies warned in a note to clients.

This disconnect has pushed the incremental price-to-earnings ratio for AI stocks to 73 times, suggesting investors are pricing in extremely optimistic growth expectations across the sector.

Nvidia has seen the largest gains, with its stock price up 656% since late 2022. Despite signs of overvaluation, Jefferies believes the AI bubble could keep expanding in the near term, citing strong capital expenditure plans through 2025 and ample cash reserves at major cloud providers.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian: In March, after analysing 22,000 tasks in the UK economy, covering every type of job, a model created by the Institute for Public Policy Research predicted that 59% of tasks currently done by humans — particularly women and young people — could be affected by AI in the next three to five years. In the worst-case scenario, this would trigger a "jobs apocalypse" where eight million people lose their jobs in the UK alone.... Darrell West, author of The Future of Work: AI, Robots and Automation, says that just as policy innovations were needed in Thomas Paine's time to help people transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy, they are needed today, as we transition to an AI economy. "There's a risk that AI is going to take a lot of jobs," he says. "A basic income could help navigate that situation."

AI's impact will be far-reaching, he predicts, affecting blue- and white-collar jobs. "It's not just going to be entry-level people who are affected. And so we need to think about what this means for the economy, what it means for society as a whole. What are people going to do if robots and AI take a lot of the jobs?"

Nell Watson, a futurist who focuses on AI ethics, has a more pessimistic view. She believes we are witnessing the dawn of an age of "AI companies": corporate environments where very few — if any — humans are employed at all. Instead, at these companies, lots of different AI sub-personalities will work independently on different tasks, occasionally hiring humans for "bits and pieces of work". These AI companies have the potential to be "enormously more efficient than human businesses", driving almost everyone else out of business, "apart from a small selection of traditional old businesses that somehow stick in there because their traditional methods are appreciated"... As a result, she thinks it could be AI companies, not governments, that end up paying people a basic income.

AI companies, meanwhile, will have no salaries to pay. "Because there are no human beings in the loop, the profits and dividends of this company could be given to the needy. This could be a way of generating support income in a way that doesn't need the state welfare. It's fully compatible with capitalism. It's just that the AI is doing it."

As the number of autism diagnoses rises in America, a number of large employers "are taking steps to make workplaces more accessible and welcoming for neurodivergent employees," reports the New York Times — including Microsoft, Dell and Ford. [Alternate URL here.] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 36 8-year-olds in the United States has autism. That's up from 1 in 44 in 2018 and 1 in 150 in 2000, an increase that experts attribute, in part, to better screening. In addition, 2.2% of adults in the country, or 5.4 million people, are autistic, according to the CDC...

Autism activists have praised companies that have become more accepting of remote work since the coronavirus pandemic. Workplaces with too much light and noise can overwhelm those who are autistic, leading to burnout, said Jessica Myszak, a clinical psychologist in Chicago who specializes in testing and evaluations for autism. Remote work "reduces the social demands and some of the environmental sensitivities" that autistic people struggle with, Myszak added.
The article notes Microsoft's neurodiversity hiring program, which was established in 2015. The company's program was modeled after a venture created by the German software firm SAP, and has since been adopted in some form by companies including Dell and Ford. The initiative has brought in about 300 full-time neurodivergent employees to Microsoft, said Neil Barnett, the company's director for inclusive hiring and accessibility. "All they needed was this different, more inclusive process," Barnett said, "and once they got into the company, they flourished."

[One job applicant] was given a job coach to help her with time management and prioritization. Microsoft also paired her with a mentor who showed her around the company's campus in Redmond. Perhaps more important, she works with managers who have received neurodiversity training. The Microsoft campus also has "focus rooms," where lights can be dimmed and the heights of desks can be changed to fit sensory preferences. Employees seated in the open office may also request to sit away from busy aisles or receive noise-canceling headphones.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from non-profit libertarian law firm, the Institute for Justice: U.S. District Judge Rita Lin has permanently enjoined the California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services from enforcing its private-investigator licensing requirement against anti-spam entrepreneur Jay Fink. The order declares that forcing Jay to get a license to run his business is so irrational that it violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment...

Jay's business stems from California's anti-spam act, which allows individuals to sue spammers. But to sue, they have to first compile evidence. To do that, recipients often have to wade through thousands of emails. For more than a decade, Jay has offered a solution: he and his team will scour a client's junk folder and catalog the messages that likely violate the law. But last summer, Jay's job — and Californians' ability to bring spammers to justice — came to a screeching halt when the state told him he was a criminal. A regulator told Jay he needed a license to read through emails that might be used as evidence in a lawsuit. And because Jay didn't have a private investigator license, the state shut him down.
The state of California has since "agreed to jointly petition the court for an order that forever prohibits it from enforcing its licensure law against Jay," according to the article.

Otherwise the anti-spam crusader would've had to endure thousands of hours of private investigator training...

"In the largest public sector trial of the four-day week in Britain, fewer refuse collectors quit," reports the Guardian, "and there were faster planning decisions, more rapid benefits processing and quicker call answering, independent research has found." South Cambridgeshire district council's controversial experiment with a shorter working week resulted in improvements in performance in 11 out of 24 areas, little or no change in 11 areas and worsening of performance in two areas, according to analysis of productivity before and during the 15-month trial by academics at the universities of Cambridge and Salford... The multi-year study of the trial involving about 450 desk staff plus refuse collectors found:

- Staff turnover fell by 39%, helping save £371,500 in a year, mostly on agency staff costs.
- Regular household planning applications were decided about a week and a half earlier.
- Approximately 15% more major planning application decisions were completed within the correct timescale, compared with before.
- The time taken to process changes to housing benefit and council tax benefit claims fell....
Under the South Cambridgeshire trial, which began in January 2023 and ran to April 2024, staff were expected to carry out 100% of their work in 80% of the time for 100% of the pay. The full trial cut staff turnover by 39% and scores for employees' physical and mental health, motivation and commitment all improved, the study showed. "Coupled with the hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money that we have saved, improved recruitment and retention and positives around health and wellbeing, this brave and pioneering trial has clearly been a success," said John Williams, the lead council member for resources...

Scores of private companies have already adopted the approach, with many finding it helps staff retention. Ryle said the South Cambridgeshire results "prove once and for all that a four-day week with no loss of pay absolutely can succeed in a local government setting".
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.

A report from TechSpot: For home videographers and data hoarders who still rely on optical discs for archiving, some bad news just dropped: Sony is winding down production of recordable Blu-ray media... In an interview Sony gave to AV Watch recently, the company admitted it's going to "gradually end development and production" of recordable Blu-rays and other optical disc formats at its Tagajo City plants in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Essentially, 25GB BD-REs, 50GB BD-RE DLs, 100GB BD-RE XLs, or 128GB BD-R XLs will soon not be available to consumers. Professional discs for video production and optical archives for data storage are also being discontinued. Sony says it's pulling the plug because the cold storage market never really took off like they hoped, and the overall storage media business has been operating in the red for years...

It's not all bad news, though. The commercial Blu-ray discs you buy movies and games on will still be produced, so there's no need to panic about the death of physical media just yet.
Share your thoughts and reactions in the comments. (Long-time Slashdot reader storkus wonders if it's possible there are still other companies, possibly Chinese, that are still making the disks?)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Constellation Energy is in talks with the Pennsylvania governor's office and state lawmakers to help fund a possible restart of part of its Three Mile Island power facility, the site of a nuclear meltdown in the 1970s, three sources familiar with the discussions said on Tuesday. The conversations, which two sources described as "beyond preliminary," signal that Constellation is advancing plans to revive part of the southern Pennsylvania nuclear generation site, which operated from 1974 to 2019. The nuclear unit Constellation is considering restarting is separate from the one that melted down.

The sources said that a shut Michigan nuclear plant, which was recently awarded a $1.5 billion conditional loan to restart from the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, could serve as a private-public sector blueprint for Three Mile Island. The sources asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the discussions. "Though we have determined it would be technically feasible to restart the unit, we have not made any decision on a restart as there are many economic, commercial, operational and regulatory considerations remaining," Constellation spokesperson Dave Snyder said in an email. Snyder did not comment on the specifics of discussions about reopening the Pennsylvania site.

Last month, Constellation told Reuters that it had cleared an engineering study of Three Mile Island, though it was unknown if the Baltimore, Maryland-based energy company would move forward with plans to reopen the site. Constellation also said that given the current premium placed on nuclear energy, acquiring other sites was generally off the table and the company would instead look to expand its existing fleet. The Three Mile Island unit that could be restarted is different to the site's unit 2, which experienced a partial meltdown in 1979 in the most famous commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history. The report notes that "no U.S. nuclear power plant has been reopened after shutting." A restart will not only be costly, but it will be challenged over safety and environmental concerns.

Samsung unveiled new wearable devices at its Unpacked event earlier this week, drawing comparisons to Apple's offerings. The Galaxy Watch Ultra, set for release on July 24, bears striking similarities to Apple's Watch Ultra 2 launched last September. Both feature titanium cases, orange-accented buttons, and specialized bands. Samsung's version, priced at $650, undercuts Apple's $800 model. Business Insider adds: But the strategy has its downsides. If you spot someone wearing Galaxy Watch Ultra, there's a good chance you'd mistake it for Apple's model -- which doesn't help Samsung differentiate itself. In a statement to Business Insider, Samsung said that the design choices for its new smartwatch were "made to ensure comfort, usability, and durability in a variety of use cases." It didn't mention what went into naming the device.

The similarities extend to Samsung's new earbuds. The Galaxy Buds 3 Pro and the Galaxy Buds 3 -- also announced at Unpacked -- got a revamp that steps away from previous designs to make Samsung's Bluetooth earbuds shaped more like Apple AirPods. The Galaxy Buds 2 Pro are stemless and come in light purple, but their successor only comes in silver or white. Similar to the AirPods Pro, Galaxy Buds 3 Pro owners will be able to control their earbuds with gestures.

Today, Amazon announced that it reached its 100% renewable energy goal seven years ahead of schedule. However, as Fast Company's Adele Peters reports, "a group of Amazon employees argues that the company's math is misleading." From the report: A report (PDF) from the group, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, argues that only 22% of the company's data centers in the U.S. actually run on clean power. The employees looked at where each data center was located and the mix of power on the regional grids -- how much was coming from coal, gas, or oil versus solar or wind. Amazon, like many other companies, buys renewable energy credits (RECs) for a certain amount of clean power that's produced by a solar plant or wind farm. In theory, RECs are supposed to push new renewable energy to get built. In reality, that doesn't always happen. The employee research found that 68% of Amazon's RECs are unbundled, meaning that they didn't fund new renewable infrastructure, but gave credit for renewables that already existed or were already going to be built.

As new data centers are built, they can mean that fossil-fuel-dependent grids end up building new fossil fuel power plants. "Dominion Energy, which is the utility in Virginia, is expanding because of demand, and Amazon is obviously one of their largest customers," says Eliza Pan, a representative from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and a former Amazon employee. "Dominion's expansion is not renewable expansion. It's more fossil fuels." Amazon also doesn't buy credits that are specifically tied to the grids powering their data centers. The company might purchase RECs from Canada or Arizona, for example, to offset electricity used in Virginia. The credits also aren't tied to the time that the energy was used; data centers run all day and night, but most renewable energy is only available some of the time. The employee group argues that the company should follow the approach that Google takes. Google aims to use carbon-free energy, 24/7, on every grid where it operates.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Taiwan's TSMC scaled a record high on Thursday after posting strong second-quarter revenue on booming demand for AI applications, cementing its position as Asia's most valuable company. TSMC also topped a trillion dollar market value this week. The AI frenzy has sparked a rally in chipmaker stocks across the globe. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker, whose customers include AI poster child Nvidia, has especially benefited from the soaring demand for AI-capable chips.

Foreign investors have poured $4.8 billion so far this year into Taiwan's stock market, which is dominated by TSMC. Asian funds, however, according to HSBC, still remain underweight on Taiwan, suggesting there could be room for further inflow. Shares of TSMC, whose customers also include Apple, have jumped nearly 80% this year, widely outperforming the benchmark Taiwan SE Weighted Index, which is up 35%. On Thursday, TSMC's Taipei-listed shares rose more than 2% to a record T$1,080, taking the company's market value to T$28 trillion ($861 billion) and making it Asia's most valuable publicly listed company.

Job growth in the UK's digital industry hit its lowest in a decade, prompting the incoming Labour government to pledge to revive the sector as it seeks to stimulate growth. From a report: The number of jobs in the sector grew by just 0.3% last year -- the lowest since a decline of 0.1% in 2013, according to Office for National Statistics data released on Thursday. Wider employment across the whole UK economy grew more than twice as fast, the data showed. The figures may stoke concerns of a stagnation in the UK tech sector, as employment and earnings stalled in the sector. Digital sector employees -- including programmers and tech consultants -- saw their hourly pay rise by just over 1% between 2022 and 2023, equating to a pay fall in real terms, the data showed. Nevertheless, the UK's new Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle, promised to revitalize the sector.