Microsoft revealed that the Russian hackers who breached its systems earlier this year stole more emails than initially reported. "We are continuing notifications to customers who corresponded with Microsoft corporate email accounts that were exfiltrated by the Midnight Blizzard threat actor, and we are providing the customers the email correspondence that was accessed by this actor," a Microsoft spokesperson told Bloomberg (paywalled). "This is increased detail for customers who have already been notified and also includes new notifications." The Register reports: We've been aware for some time that the digital Russian break-in at the Windows maker saw Kremlin spies make off with source code, executive emails, and sensitive U.S. government data. Reports last week revealed that the issue was even larger than initially believed and additional customers' data has been stolen. Along with Russia, Microsoft was also compromised by state actors from China not long ago, and that issue similarly led to the theft of emails and other data belonging to senior U.S. government officials.

Both incidents have led experts to call Microsoft a threat to U.S. national security, and president Brad Smith to issue a less-than-reassuring mea culpa to Congress. All the while, the U.S. government has actually invested more in its Microsoft kit. Bloomberg reported that emails being sent to affected Microsoft customers include a link to a secure environment where customers can visit a site to review messages Microsoft identified as having been compromised. But even that might not have been the most security-conscious way to notify folks: Several thought they were being phished.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Meta continues to hit walls with its heavily scrutinized plan to comply with the European Union's strict online competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), by offering Facebook and Instagram subscriptions as an alternative for privacy-inclined users who want to opt out of ad targeting. Today, the European Commission (EC) announced preliminary findings that Meta's so-called "pay or consent" or "pay or OK" model -- which gives users a choice to either pay for access to its platforms or give consent to collect user data to target ads -- is not compliant with the DMA. According to the EC, Meta's advertising model violates the DMA in two ways. First, it "does not allow users to opt for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise equivalent to the 'personalized ads-based service." And second, it "does not allow users to exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data," the press release said.

Now, Meta will have a chance to review the EC's evidence and defend its policy, with today's findings kicking off a process that will take months. The EC's investigation is expected to conclude next March. Thierry Breton, the commissioner for the internal market, said in the press release that the preliminary findings represent "another important step" to ensure Meta's full compliance with the DMA. "The DMA is there to give back to the users the power to decide how their data is used and ensure innovative companies can compete on equal footing with tech giants on data access," Breton said. A Meta spokesperson told Ars that Meta plans to fight the findings -- which could trigger fines up to 10 percent of the company's worldwide turnover, as well as fines up to 20 percent for repeat infringement if Meta loses. The EC agreed that more talks were needed, writing in the press release, "the Commission continues its constructive engagement with Meta to identify a satisfactory path towards effective compliance." Meta continues to claim that its "subscription for no ads" model was "endorsed" by the highest court in Europe, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), last year.

"Subscription for no ads follows the direction of the highest court in Europe and complies with the DMA," Meta's spokesperson said. "We look forward to further constructive dialogue with the European Commission to bring this investigation to a close."

Meta rolled out its ad-free subscription service option last November. "Depending on where you purchase it will cost $10.5/month on the web or $13.75/month on iOS and Android," said the company in a blog post. "Regardless of where you purchase, the subscription will apply to all linked Facebook and Instagram accounts in a user's Accounts Center. As is the case for many online subscriptions, the iOS and Android pricing take into account the fees that Apple and Google charge through respective purchasing policies."

Apple's decision not to launch its own AI features in the EU is a "stunning declaration" of its anticompetitive behavior, European Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said. From a report: About two weeks ago, Apple announced it will not launch its homegrown AI features in the EU, saying that interoperability required by the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) could hurt user privacy and security. A few days later, the Commission accused Apple's App Store of DMA breaches. Apple's move to roll back its AI plans in Europe is the most "stunning, open declaration that they know 100% that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already," Vestager, the Commission's vice president for a Europe fit for the digital age and Commissioner for Competition, told a Forum Europa event.

The "short version of the DMA [Digital Markets Act]" is that to operate in Europe, companies have to be open for competition, said Vestager. The DMA foresees fines of up to 10% of annual revenue, which in Apple's case could be over $32.2 billion, based on its previous financial performance. For repeated infringements, that percentage could double.

It's been adapted into a graphic novel, a videogame, a radio play, and an opera, according to Wikipedia — which also describes years of trying to adapt Neuromancer into a movie. "The landmark 1984 cyberpunk novel has been on Hollywood's wishlist for decades," writes Gizmodo, "with multiple filmmakers attempting to bring it to the big screen." (Back in 2010, Slashdot's CmdrTaco even posted an update with the headline "Neuromancer Movie In Your Future?" with a 2011 story promising the movie deal was "moving forward....")

But now Deadline reports it's becoming a 10-episode series on Apple TV+ (co-produced by Apple Studios) starring Callum Turner and Brianna Middleton: Created for television by Graham Roland and JD Dillard, Neuromancer follows a damaged, top-rung super-hacker named Case (Turner) who is thrust into a web of digital espionage and high stakes crime with his partner Molly (Middleton), a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes, aiming to pull a heist on a corporate dynasty with untold secrets.
More from Gizmodo: "We're incredibly excited to be bringing this iconic property to Apple TV+," Roland and Dillard said in a statement. "Since we became friends nearly 10 years ago, we've looked for something to team up on, so this collaboration marks a dream come true. Neuromancer has inspired so much of the science fiction that's come after it and we're looking forward to bringing television audiences into Gibson's definitive 'cyberpunk' world."
The novel launched Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy of novels (building on the dystopia in his 1982 short story "Burning Chrome"), also resurrecting the "Molly Millions" character from Johnny Mnemonic — an even earlier short story from 1981...

Commercial space efforts continue around the world, as the Chinese company Space Pioneer fired up a partially-fueled rocket engine Sunday for a short-duration test of its reusable rocket on the ground. But Space News reports that the test "ended in catastrophic failure and a dramatic explosion."

"Amateur footage captured by Gongyi citizens and posted on Chinese social media shows the nine-engine test stage igntiing and then, exceptionally, taking off." Hold-down clamps and other structures are typically used to securely keep stages in place. The stage is seen climbing into the sky before halting, apparently with its engines shutting off, and returning to Earth. The stage impacted the ground around 50 seconds after it took off, apparently with much of its kerosene-liquid oxygen propellant remaining, causing a large explosion.

The Tianlong-3 first stage would likely fire for a number of minutes on an orbital flight. Space Pioneer was conducting its test as a buildup to an orbital launch of the Tianlong-3, which is benchmarked against the SpaceX Falcon 9, in the coming months. The company announced earlier this month that it has secured $207 million in new funding.

Shanghai-based digital newspaper The Paper reported Henan officials as saying there were no casualties reported. Space Pioneer issued its own statement later, stating there was a structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench. The rocket's onboard computer automatically shut down the engines and the rocket fell 1.5 kilometers southwest. It reiterated earlier reports that no casualties were found. The company said the test produced 820 tons of thrust.
The article speculates on whether the event will delay the development of the rocket — or the planned launches for a Chinese megaconstellation of satellites. "Space Pioneer says it will conduct an analysis and restart testing with new hardware as soon as possible."

This week the Linux Foundation announced a new organization for decentralized systems and technologies, with an aim of "fostering innovation and collaboration" in both their development and deployment.

It will build on existing Linux Foundation blockchain and digital identity projects, according to the announcement, while supporting "a rapidly growing decentralized technology landscape." To foster this broader ecosystem, LF Decentralized Trust will encompass the growing portfolio of Hyperledger projects and host new open source software, communities, standards, and specifications that are critical to the macro shift toward decentralized systems of distributed trust....

LF Decentralized Trust's expanded project and member ecosystem will be both essential to emerging tokenized assets classes and networks, as well as to modernizing the core infrastructure for finance, trade, government, healthcare, and more. LF Decentralized Trust will serve as a neutral home for the open development of a broad range of ledger, identity, security, interoperability, scale, implementation, and related technologies... LF Decentralized Trust will also include new directed funding models that will drive strategic investments by members into individual projects and project resources.

"With LF Decentralized Trust, we're expanding our commitment to open source innovation by embracing a wider array of decentralized technologies," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. "This new, elevated foundation will enable the community to build a more robust ecosystem that drives forward transparency, security, and efficiency in global infrastructure."

"After eight years of advancing the development of blockchain, decentralized identity and related technologies via the Hyperledger community, the time has come to broaden our effort and impact," said Daniela Barbosa, General Manager, Blockchain and Identity, the Linux Foundation. "Ledgers and ledger technologies are but one component of the decentralized systems that will underpin a digital-first global economy. LF Decentralized Trust is where we will gather and grow an expanded community and portfolio of technologies to deliver the transparency, reliability, security and efficiency needed to successfully upgrade critical systems around the world."
The announcement includes quotes of support from numerous companies including Oracle, Siemens, Visa, Accenture, Citi, and Hitachi. Some highlights:

• "The formation of the LF Decentralized Trust reflects the growing demand for open source resources that are critical to the management and functionality of decentralized systems." — CEO of Digital Asset

• "The adoption of decentralized infrastructure is at an inflection point, reflecting the increasing demand from both enterprises and consumers for more secure and transparent digital transactions. As the industry leader for onchain data, blockchain abstraction, and interoperability, we're excited to see the formation of the LF Decentralized Trust and to expand our collaboration with leading financial institutions on advancing tokenized assets and the onchain economy at large." — CMO at Chainlink Labs.

• "As a founding member of the Hyperledger Foundation, and given our unique position in the financial markets, we recognize the vast potential for open-source innovation and decentralized technologies when it comes to reducing risk, increasing resiliency and improving security. The expansion of Hyperledger Foundation into LF Decentralized Trust represents an exciting opportunity to continue expanding these groundbreaking technologies." — a managing director at DTCC

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Internet Archive (IA) went before a three-judge panel Friday to defend its open library's controlled digital lending (CDL) practices after book publishers last year won a lawsuit claiming that the archive's lending violated copyright law. In the weeks ahead of IA's efforts to appeal that ruling, IA was forced to remove 500,000 books from its collection, shocking users. In an open letter to publishers, more than 30,000 readers, researchers, and authors begged for access to the books to be restored in the open library, claiming the takedowns dealt "a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others," who may not have access to a local library or feel "safe accessing the information they need in public."

During a press briefing following arguments in court Friday, IA founder Brewster Kahle said that "those voices weren't being heard." Judges appeared primarily focused on understanding how IA's digital lending potentially hurts publishers' profits in the ebook licensing market, rather than on how publishers' costly ebook licensing potentially harms readers. However, lawyers representing IA -- Joseph C. Gratz, from the law firm Morrison Foerster, and Corynne McSherry, from the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation -- confirmed that judges were highly engaged by IA's defense. Arguments that were initially scheduled to last only 20 minutes stretched on instead for an hour and a half. Ultimately, judges decided not to rule from the bench, with a decision expected in the coming months or potentially next year. McSherry said the judges' engagement showed that the judges "get it" and won't make the decision without careful consideration of both sides.

"They understand this is an important decision," McSherry said. "They understand that there are real consequences here for real people. And they are taking their job very, very seriously. And I think that's the best that we can hope for, really." On the other side, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the trade organization behind the lawsuit, provided little insight into how the day went. When reached for comment, AAP simply said, "We thought it was a strong day in court, and we look forward to the opinion." [...] "There is no deadline for them to make a decision," Gratz said, but it "probably won't happen until early fall" at the earliest. After that, whichever side loses will have an opportunity to appeal the case, which has already stretched on for four years, to the Supreme Court. Since neither side seems prepared to back down, the Supreme Court eventually weighing in seems inevitable.

An anonymous reader quotes an op-ed for Slate, written by Amanda Chen: In August 2009, Wired magazine ran a cover story on Craigslist founder Craig Newmark titled "Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess." The opening paragraphs excoriate almost every aspect of the online classifieds platform as "underdeveloped," a "wasteland of hyperlinks," and demands that we, the public, ought to have higher standards. The same sentiment can found across tech forums and trade publications, a missed opportunity that the average self-professed LinkedIn expert on #UX #UI #design will have you believe that they are the first to point out. But as sites like Craigslist increasingly turn into digital artifacts, more people, myself included, are starting to see the beauty that belies those same features. Without them, where else on the internet could you find such ardent professions of desire or loneliness, or the random detritus of a life so steeply discounted?

The site has changed relatively little in both functionality and appearance since Newmark launched it in 1995 as a friends and family listserv for jobs and other opportunities. Yet in spite of that, it remains a household name whose niche in the contemporary digital landscape has yet to be usurped, with an estimated 180 million visits in May 2024. Though, it's certainly not for a lack of newcomers attempting to stake their claims on the booming C2C market; in the U.S., Facebook Marketplace, launched in 2016, is its closest direct competitor, followed by platforms like Nextdoor and OfferUp. Craigslist's business model is quite simple: Users in a few categories -- apartments in select cities, jobs, vehicles for sale -- pay a small but reasonable fee to make posts. Everything else is free. Its Perl-backed tech is straightforward. The team is relatively lean, as the company considers functions like sales and marketing superfluous. This strategy has allowed Craigslist to stay extremely profitable throughout the years without implementing sophisticated recommendation algorithms or inundating the webpage with third-party advertisements. Its runaway success threatens decades-old industry gospels of growth, disruption, and innovation, and might force tech evangelists to admit they don't fully understand what people want. [...]

These days I find myself casually browsing Craigslist in lieu of Instagram. Like readers of a local paper, I use it to keep a pulse on what's happening around me, even if I'll never know who these people are. That's beside the point. Perhaps Craigslist's single greatest cultural contribution, and my favorite place to lurk, is the "missed connections." The feature has inspired countless copycats, artistic reinterpretations, human interest stories, and analyses (one in particular extrapolated that Monday evenings are the most lovelorn time across the country). There is something deeply comforting about seeing those intangible threads of yearning which permeate a city so plainly laid out, as confirmation that you're not alone in wanting to be seen by others alive in the same place and time as you. Sometimes I'll peruse random job listings or the "free" section. This leads to the ever-amusing exercise, which I'll often invite friends to participate in, of speculating about the motivations and circumstances behind an object's acquisition and imminent relinquishment. I'll even visit the clunky, dial-up era-style discussion forums, subdivided into topics labeled things like "death and dying" or "haiku hotel," where a unique penchant for whimsy and romance can be felt deeply throughout. On Craigslist, a post can be a shout into the void that may or may not be returned, an affirmation of life, but regardless, in 45 days it's gone. Positioned somewhere in between digital ephemera and archive, the site's images and language are often utilitarian, occasionally unintelligible, and just when you least expect it, absurd, poetic, and profound. "Frequently, technologists remain convinced that the market will eventually reveal a solution for all of our deep-seated societal problems, something that we can hack if only granted access to better tech," writes Chen, in closing. "From the start, the industry has advanced the idea that change is inherently good, even if only for its own sake, which can be viewed as symptomatic of the accelerating conditions of late-stage capitalism. Of course, there are many ways in which change is desperately needed in this moment, but when it comes to the particular case of Craigslist, it hardly seems necessary."

Fujifilm's X100 digital camera, once a niche product, has become an unexpected cash cow, driven by surging demand from young social media users. The retro-styled $1,599 camera has boosted Fujifilm's imaging division to its biggest profit contributor, accounting for 37% of operating profit in fiscal 2023, up from 27% the previous year.

Despite doubling production in China for the latest model, Fujifilm struggles to meet demand. The camera's popularity on platforms like TikTok has transformed it into a coveted accessory. The surge marks an unexpected reversal for Fujifilm, which had pivoted towards healthcare after the decline of traditional film photography.

The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), the nation's oldest nonprofit newsroom, sued OpenAI and Microsoft in federal court on Thursday for allegedly using its content to train AI models without consent or compensation. CIR, founded in 1977 in San Francisco, evolved into a multi-platform newsroom with its flagship distribution platform Reveal. In February, it merged with Mother Jones.

"OpenAI and Microsoft started vacuuming up our stories to make their product more powerful, but they never asked for permission or offered compensation, unlike other organizations that license our material," said Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, in a statement. "This free rider behavior is not only unfair, it is a violation of copyright. The work of journalists, at CIR and everywhere, is valuable, and OpenAI and Microsoft know it." Bauerlein said that OpenAI and Microsoft treat the work of nonprofit and independent publishers "as free raw material for their products," and added that such moves by generative AI companies hurt the public's access to truthful information in a "disappearing news landscape." Engadget reports: The CIR's lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan's federal court, accuses OpenAI and Microsoft, which owns nearly half of the company, of violating the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act multiple times.

News organizations find themselves at an inflection point with generative AI. While the CIR is joining publishers like The New York Times, New York Daily News, The Intercept, AlterNet and Chicago Tribune in suing OpenAI, others publishers have chosen to strike licensing deals with the company. These deals will allow OpenAI to train its models on archives and ongoing content published by these publishers and cite information from them in responses offered by ChatGPT.

Chinese undersea cable manufacturers are experiencing growth despite U.S. trade restrictions, as Beijing pushes for self-sufficiency in critical communications infrastructure, Nikkei is reporting. FiberHome International Technologies, blacklisted by the U.S. in 2020, reports increased business due to China's drive for domestic production. "We don't need foreign technologies," a FiberHome executive told Nikkei.

China is challenging U.S. dominance in the global undersea cable network, which spans 1.4 million kilometers and carries over 95% of the world's data. Chinese companies are expected to contribute 45% of new cable installations from 2023 to 2028, according to industry estimates. The Asia-Pacific region leads in subsea cable investment, with China spearheading multiple projects connecting to Southeast Asian nations. This aligns with President Xi Jinping's "Digital Silk Road" initiative, part of the broader Belt and Road strategy. However, geopolitical tensions have led to project delays and increased costs. Some cables are being rerouted to avoid contentious areas like the South China Sea, potentially creating parallel networks divided along geopolitical lines.

MTVNews.com has been shut down, with more than two decades' worth of content no longer available. "Content on its sister site, CMT.com, seems to have met a similar fate," adds Variety. From the report: In 2023, MTV News was shuttered amid the financial woes of parent company Paramount Global. As of Monday, trying to access MTV News articles on mtvnews.com or mtv.com/news resulted in visitors being redirected to the main MTV website.

The now-unavailable content includes decades of music journalism comprising thousands of articles and interviews with countless major artists, dating back to the site's launch in 1996. Perhaps the most significant loss is MTV News' vast hip-hop-related archives, particularly its weekly "Mixtape Monday" column, which ran for nearly a decade in the 2000s and 2010s and featured interviews, reviews and more with many artists, producers and others early in their careers. "So, mtvnews.com no longer exists. Eight years of my life are gone without a trace," Patrick Hosken, former music editor for MTV News, wrote on X. "All because it didn't fit some executives' bottom lines. Infuriating is too small a word."

"sickening (derogatory) to see the entire @mtvnews archive wiped from the internet," Crystal Bell, culture editor at Mashable and one-time entertainment director of MTV News, posted on X."decades of music history gone... including some very early k-pop stories."

"This is disgraceful. They've completely wiped the MTV News archive," longtime Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hiatt commented. "Decades of pop culture history research material gone, and why?"

The report notes that some MTV News articles may be available via internet archiving services like the Wayback Machine. However, older articles aren't available.

Apple is imposing unfair restrictions on developers of apps for its App Store in violation of a new European Union law meant to encourage competition in the tech industry, regulators in Brussels said on Monday. From a report: The charges further escalated a tussle between Apple, which says its products are designed in the best interest of customers, and E.U. regulators, who say the company is unfairly using its size and considerable resources to stifle competition. Apple is the first company to be charged for violating the Digital Markets Act, a law passed in 2022 that gives European regulators wide authority to force the largest "online gatekeepers" to change their business practices.

After initiating an investigation in March, E.U. regulators said Apple was putting unlawful restrictions on companies that make games, music services and other applications. Under the law, also known as the D.M.A., Apple cannot limit how companies communicate with customers about sales and other offers and content available outside the App Store. The company faces a penalty of 10 percent of global revenue, a fine that could go up to 20 percent for repeat infringements, regulators said. Apple reported $383 billion in revenue last year. "Today is a very important day for the effective enforcement of the D.M.A.," said Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission executive vice president in charge of competition policy. She said Apple's App Store policies make developers more dependent on the company and prevent consumers from being aware of better offers.

OpenAI's 'Media Manager' Mocked, Amid Accusations of Robbing Creative Professionals "Amid the hype surrounding Apple's new deal with OpenAI, one issue has been largely papered over," argues the Executive Director of America's writer's advocacy group, the Authors Guild.

OpenAI's foundational models "are, and have always been, built atop the theft of creative professionals' work." [L]ast month the company quietly announced Media Manager, scheduled for release in 2025. A tool purportedly designed to allow creators and content owners to control how their work is used, Media Manager is really a shameless attempt to evade responsibility for the theft of artists' intellectual property that OpenAI is already profiting from.

OpenAI says this tool would allow creators to identify their work and choose whether to exclude it from AI training processes. But this does nothing to address the fact that the company built its foundational models using authors' and other creators' works without consent, compensation or control over how OpenAI users will be able to imitate the artists' styles to create new works. As it's described, Media Manager puts the burden on creators to protect their work and fails to address the company's past legal and ethical transgressions. This overture is like having your valuables stolen from your home and then hearing the thief say, "Don't worry, I'll give you a chance to opt out of future burglaries ... next year...."

AI companies often argue that it would be impossible for them to license all the content that they need and that doing so would bring progress to a grinding halt. This is simply untrue. OpenAI has signed a succession of licensing agreements with publishers large and small. While the exact terms of these agreements are rarely released to the public, the compensation estimates pale in comparison with the vast outlays for computing power and energy that the company readily spends. Payments to authors would have minimal effects on AI companies' war chests, but receiving royalties for AI training use would be a meaningful new revenue stream for a profession that's already suffering...

We cannot trust tech companies that swear their innovations are so important that they do not need to pay for one of the main ingredients — other people's creative works. The "better future" we are being sold by OpenAI and others is, in fact, a dystopia. It's time for creative professionals to stand together, demand what we are owed and determine our own futures.
The Authors Guild (and 17 other plaintiffs) are now in an ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. And the Guild's executive director also notes that there's also "a class action filed by visual artists against Stability AI, Runway AI, Midjourney and Deviant Art, a lawsuit by music publishers against Anthropic for infringement of song lyrics, and suits in the U.S. and U.K. brought by Getty Images against Stability AI for copyright infringement of photographs."

They conclude that "The best chance for the wider community of artists is to band together."

Walmart "became the latest retailer to announce it's replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf labels," reports NPR.

"The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds." "If it's hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. If there's something that's close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that's the good news," said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst...

The ability to easily change prices wasn't mentioned in Walmart's announcement that 2,300 stores will have the digitized shelf labels by 2026. Daniela Boscan, who participated in Walmart's pilot of the labels in Texas, said the label's key benefits are "increased productivity and reduced walking time," plus quicker restocking of shelves...

As higher wages make labor more expensive, retailers big and small can benefit from the increased productivity that digitized shelf labels enable, said Santiago Gallino, a professor specializing in retail management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "The bottom line, at least when I talk to retailers, is the calculation of the amount of labor that they're going to save by incorporating this. And in that sense, I don't think that this is something that only large corporations like Walmart or Target can benefit from," Gallino said. "I think that smaller chains can also see the potential benefit of it."
Indeed, Walmart's announcement calls the tech "a win" for both customers and their workers, arguing that updating prices with a mobile app means "reducing the need to walk around the store to change paper tags by hand and giving us more time to support customers in the store." Professor Gallino tells NPR he doesn't think Walmart will suddenly change prices — though he does think Walmart will use it to keep their offline and online prices identical.

The article also points out you can already find electronic shelf labels at other major grocers inlcuding Amazon Fresh stores and Whole Foods — and that digitized shelf labels "are even more common in stores across Europe." Another feature of electronic shelf labels is their product descriptions. [Grocery analyst] Lempert notes that barcodes on the new labels can provide useful details other than the price. "They can actually be used where you take your mobile device and you scan it and it can give you more information about the product — whether it's the sourcing of the product, whether it's gluten free, whether it's keto friendly. That's really the promise of what these shelf tags can do," Lempert said.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader loveandpeace for sharing the article.

In 2022, Red Hat announced plans to extend RHEL to the automotive industry through Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System (providing automakers with an open and functionally-safe platform). And this week Red Hat announced it achieved ISO 26262 ASIL-B certification from exida for the Linux math library (libm.so glibc) — a fundamental component of that Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System.

From Red Hat's announcement: This milestone underscores Red Hat's pioneering role in obtaining continuous and comprehensive Safety Element out of Context certification for Linux in automotive... This certification demonstrates that the engineering of the math library components individually and as a whole meet or exceed stringent functional safety standards, ensuring substantial reliability and performance for the automotive industry. The certification of the math library is a significant milestone that strengthens the confidence in Linux as a viable platform of choice for safety related automotive applications of the future...

By working with the broader open source community, Red Hat can make use of the rigorous testing and analysis performed by Linux maintainers, collaborating across upstream communities to deliver open standards-based solutions. This approach enhances long-term maintainability and limits vendor lock-in, providing greater transparency and performance. Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System is poised to offer a safety certified Linux-based operating system capable of concurrently supporting multiple safety and non-safety related applications in a single instance. These applications include advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), digital cockpit, infotainment, body control, telematics, artificial intelligence (AI) models and more. Red Hat is also working with key industry leaders to deliver pre-tested, pre-integrated software solutions, accelerating the route to market for SDV concepts.
"Red Hat is fully committed to attaining continuous and comprehensive safety certification of Linux natively for automotive applications," according to the announcement, "and has the industry's largest pool of Linux maintainers and contributors committed to this initiative..."

Or, as Network World puts it, "The phrase 'open source for the open road' is now being used to describe the inevitable fit between the character of Linux and the need for highly customizable code in all sorts of automotive equipment."

An anonymous reader shared this report from Computer Weekly: Microsoft has admitted to Scottish policing bodies that it cannot guarantee the sovereignty of UK policing data hosted on its hyperscale public cloud infrastructure, despite its systems being deployed throughout the criminal justice sector.

According to correspondence released by the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) under freedom of information (FOI) rules, Microsoft is unable to guarantee that data uploaded to a key Police Scotland IT system — the Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC) — will remain in the UK as required by law. While the correspondence has not been released in full, the disclosure reveals that data hosted in Microsoft's hyperscale public cloud infrastructure is regularly transferred and processed overseas; that the data processing agreement in place for the DESC did not cover UK-specific data protection requirements; and that while the company has the ability to make technical changes to ensure data protection compliance, it is only making these changes for DESC partners and not other policing bodies because "no one else had asked".

The correspondence also contains acknowledgements from Microsoft that international data transfers are inherent to its public cloud architecture. As a result, the issues identified with the Scottish Police will equally apply to all UK government users, many of whom face similar regulatory limitations on the offshoring of data. The recipient of the FOI disclosures, Owen Sayers — an independent security consultant and enterprise architect with over 20 years' experience in delivering national policing systems — concluded it is now clear that UK policing data has been travelling overseas and "the statements from Microsoft make clear that they 100% cannot comply with UK data protection law".

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Ellen Bagley was delighted when she made her first sale on a popular second-hand clothing app, but just a few minutes later, the thrill turned to shock as the 20-year-old from Linkoping in Sweden discovered she'd been robbed. Everything seemed normal when Bagley received a direct message on the platform, which asked her to verify personal details to complete the deal. She clicked the link, which fired up BankID -- the ubiquitous digital authorization system used by nearly all Swedish adults.After receiving a couple of error messages, she started thinking something was wrong, but it was already too late. Over 10,000 Swedish kronor ($1,000) had been siphoned from her account and the thieves disappeared into the digital shadows. "The fraudsters are so skilled at making things look legitimate," said Bagley, who was born after BankID was created. "It's not easy" to identify scams. Although financial crime has garnered fewer headlines than a surge in gang-related gun violence, it's become a growing risk for the country. Beyond its borders, Sweden is an important test case on fighting cashless crime because it's gone further on ditching paper money than almost any other country in Europe.

Online fraud and digital crime in Sweden have surged, with criminals taking 1.2 billion kronor in 2023 through scams like the one Bagley fell for, doubling from 2021. Law-enforcement agencies estimate that the size of Sweden's criminal economy could amount to as high as 2.5% of the country's gross domestic product. To counter the digital crime spree, Swedish authorities have put pressure on banks to tighten security measures and make it harder on tech-savvy criminals, but it's a delicate balancing act. Going too far could slow down the economy, while doing too little erodes trust and damages legitimate businesses in the process.Using complex webs of fake companies and forging documents to gain access to Sweden's welfare system, sophisticated fraudsters have made Sweden a "Silicon Valley for criminal entrepreneurship," said Daniel Larson, a senior economic crime prosecutor. While the shock of armed violence has grabbed public attention -- the nation's gun-homicide rate tripled between 2012 and 2022 -- economic crime underlies gang activity and needs to be tackled as aggressively, he added. "That has been a strategic mistake," Larson said. "This profit-generating crime is what's fueling organized crime and, in some cases, leads to these conflicts."

Sweden's switch to electronic cash started after a surge of armed robberies in the 1990s, and by 2022, only 8% of Swedes said they had used cash for their latest purchase, according to a central bank survey. Along with neighboring Norway, Sweden has Europe's lowest number of ATMs per capita, according to the IMF. The prevalence of BankID play a role in Sweden's vulnerability. The system works like an online signature. If used, it's considered a done deal and the transaction gets executed immediately. It was designed by Sweden's banks to make electronic payments even quicker and easier than handing over a stack of bills. Since it's original rollout in 2001, it's become part of the everyday Swedish life. On average, the service -- which requires a six-digit code, a fingerprint or a face scan for authentication -- is used more than twice a day by every adult Swede and is involved in everything from filing tax returns to paying for bus tickets.Originally intended as a product by banks for their customers, its use exploded in 2005 after Sweden's tax agency adopted the technology as an identification for tax returns, giving it the government's official seal of approval. The launch of BankID on mobile phones in 2010 increased usage even further, along with public perception that associated cash with criminality.The country's central bank has acknowledged that some of those connotations may have gone too far. "We have to be very clear that there are still honest people using cash," Riksbank Governor Erik Thedeen told Bloomberg.

British startup Stability AI has appointed Prem Akkaraju as its new CEO. The 51-year-old Akkaraju, former CEO of visual effects company Weta Digital, "is part of a group of investors including former Facebook President Sean Parker that has stepped in to save Stability with a cash infusion that could result in a lower valuation for the firm," reports the Information (paywalled). "The new funding will likely shrink the stakes of some existing investors, who have collectively contributed more than $100 million."

In March, Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque stepped down from the role to pursue decentralized AI. "In a series of posts on X, Mostaque opined that one can't beat 'centralized AI' with more 'centralized AI,' referring to the ownership structure of top AI startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic," reported TechCrunch at the time. The move followed a report in April that claimed the company ran out of cash to pay its bills for its rented cloud GPUs. Last year, the company raised millions at a $1 billion valuation.

Apple is withholding a raft of new technologies from hundreds of millions of consumers in the European Union, citing concerns posed by the bloc's regulatory attempts to rein in Big Tech. From a report: The company announced Friday it would block the release of Apple Intelligence, iPhone Mirroring and SharePlay Screen Sharing from users in the EU this year, because the Digital Markets Act allegedly forces it to downgrade the security of its products and services.

"We are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security," Apple said in a statement. Under the DMA, Apple is expected to receive a formal warning from EU regulators over how it allegedly blocks apps from steering users to cheaper subscription deals on the web -- a practice for which it received a $1.9 billion fine from Brussels regulators earlier this year.