An 18-year-old from New York is suing Apple for $1 billion -- saying an erroneous facial recognition system in their stores wrongfully led to his arrest. An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: Ousmane Bah, who was arrested at his home in November, claims the warrant included a photo of someone else. The lawsuit also said a detective with the New York Police Department concluded the thief caught on the shop's surveillance camera "looked nothing like" Bah. The lawsuit, citing the detective, says Apple uses facial recognition technology to identify shoplifters. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bah said he had an interim learner's permit, which does not have a photo, that had either been lost or stolen. His lawyer said the permit may have been presented as identification at Apple stores, erroneously matching Bah's name with the thief's face in the company's security system. That means every time the perpetrator walked into an Apple store, his face would register as Bah on Apple's surveillance.

Bah had been charged in multiple jurisdictions including New York, Massachusetts, Delaware and New Jersey, according to the lawsuit. Charges in three cases against Bah have been dropped, but the New Jersey case is pending.

Avengers: Endgame has already earned more money in just five days than 17 of the 21 previous films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe did in their entire theatrical run (including Captain Marvel). The Wrap reports that it's the first time in history a movie has earned over a billion dollars in just its first weekend.

It demolished the record $640,521,291 global box office opening for the previous Avengers movie, Infinity Wars, in 2018. This weekend the sequel earned $1,209,000,000, with both Avengers films earning more than the next-biggest-opening films The Fate of the Furious and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

In fact, "In one fell swoop, Avengers: Endgame has already made more than movies like Skyfall, Aquaman and The Dark Knight Rises grossed in their entire runs, not accounting for inflation," reports USA Today: To accommodate demand, Disney released Avengers: Endgame in more theaters (4,662 in the U.S. and Canada) than any opening before. Advance ticketing services set new records. Early ticket buyers crashed AMC's website. And starting Thursday, some theaters even stayed open 72 hours straight. "We've got some really tired staff," says John Fithian, president and chief executive of the National Association of Theater Owners. "I talked to an exhibitor in Kansas who said, 'I've never sold out a 7 a.m. show on Saturday morning before,' and they were doing it all across their circuit."

Not working in the film's favor was its lengthy three-hour running time. But theaters added thousands of showings for Endgame to get it on more screens than any movie before to satiate the frenzy.

For an industry dogged by uncertainty over the growing role of streaming, the weekend was a mammoth display of the movie theater's lucrative potency. Fithian calls it possibly "the most significant moment in the modern history of the movie business.... We're looking at more than 30 million American and more than 100 million global guests that experienced Endgame on the big screen in one weekend," Fithian says. "The numbers are just staggering...."

Disney now holds all but one of the top 12 box-office openings of all time. (Universal's Jurassic World is the lone exception...) After its acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Disney is expected to account for at least 40% of domestic box-office revenue in 2019, a new record of market share... The company's Captain Marvel -- positioned as a kind of Marvel lead-in to Endgame -- rose to No. 2 in its eighth weekend in theaters.
Comscore reports that the movie accounted for 88% of all ticket sales this weekend -- and that the total weekend box office of $400 million was the largest ever. Theatre owners hope this will also mean more ticket sales in the future, with millions of moviegoers exposed to trailers for upcoming films. And whatever happens, "This has got to be the biggest weekend in popcorn history," a senior media analyst for Comscore told USA Today.

"Think of the gallons of soda and the hot dogs sold!"

Privacy watchdogs are accusing Facebook of "serious contraventions of Canadian privacy laws" in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. From a report: In a joint report released Thursday, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia said the Menlo Park, California-based technology giant didn't obtain proper consent from users to disclose their personal data, didn't have adequate safeguards to protect that data and didn't take proper responsibility for the information under its control. "Facebook's refusal to act responsibly is deeply troubling given the vast amount of sensitive personal information users have entrusted to this company," Privacy Commissioner of Canada Daniel Therrien said in a news release. "Their privacy framework was empty, and their vague terms were so elastic that they were not meaningful for privacy protection." Therrien's office plans to take the matter to Federal Court to "seek an order to force the company to correct its privacy practices," according to the release.

AmiMoJo writes: The UK government has given Chinese telecoms giant Huawei the go-ahead to supply equipment for the UK 5G data network. The company will help build some "non-core" parts such as antennas. But the plans have concerned the home, defense and foreign secretaries. The U.S. also wants its allies in the "Five Eyes" intelligence grouping -- the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- to exclude Huawei. Huawei said it was "pleased that the UK is continuing to take an evidence-based approach to its work," adding it would continue to work cooperatively with the government and the industry.

"U.S. intelligence has accused Huawei Technologies of being funded by Chinese state security, The Times said on Saturday."

Long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear shares a story from Reuters: The CIA accused Huawei of receiving funding from China's National Security Commission, the People's Liberation Army and a third branch of the Chinese state intelligence network, the British newspaper reported, citing a source. Earlier this year, U.S. intelligence shared its claims with other members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group, which includes Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, according to the report...

The accusation comes at a time of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing and amid concerns in the United States that Huawei's equipment could be used for espionage. The company has said the concerns are unfounded... top educational institutions in the West have recently severed ties with Huawei to avoid losing federal funding.

"A civil liberties group in Canada is suing three tiers of government over potential privacy issues posed by Sidewalk Labs's plan to develop a 12-acre smart city in Toronto, which will be approved or denied later this summer," reports Fast Company.

The fight centers around a taxpayer-funded organization jointly created by the federal, provincial, and municipal governments: The Canadian Civil Liberties Association claims that Waterfront Toronto, let alone Sidewalk Labs, doesn't have the jurisdiction to make rules about people's privacy. The government "sold out our constitutional rights to freedom from surveillance and sold it to the global surveillance mammoth of behavioral data collection: Google," said Michael Bryant, the executive director and general counsel of the CCLA, in a press conference.... "Our job at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is to say to all three levels of government that Canadians should not be Google's lab rat. This lab needs to be shut down and reset...."

Ann Cavoukian, the former Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Canadian province of Ontario who joined the project early, quit in October 2018. The reason? Sidewalk Labs had decided not to require that all data collected by third parties in the development be instantly de-identified at the source, which would mean that sensitive data like people's faces or license plates could still potentially be used for corporate profit. "I knew the smart city of privacy wasn't going to happen," she says. "That's why I resigned: I said, I can't go along with it...."

"If I was still involved, I'd want more decentralized models of data where the individual could truly retain control of the data," she says, citing a new, privacy-centric model from the web's father, Tim Berners-Lee, to decentralize the web and take back control from the corporations that run it.
In a statement Sidewalk Labs said they favor a data trust run by an independent third party partnering with the government to benefit the community and "spur innovation and investment" while protecting privacy. "Sidewalk Labs fully supports a robust and healthy discussion regarding privacy, data ownership, and governance. But this debate must be rooted in fact, not fiction and fear-mongering."

But the CCLA's web site argues that unlawful surveillance "is wrong whether done by data profiteers or the state." The article also quotes their general counsel's complaint that the government has "outsourced our privacy rights and the supervision of our privacy rights and our surveillance to the very company that's doing the surveillance."

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: The first medical device to treat childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, was OK'd Friday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Designated for children ages 7 to 12 who are not currently on medication for the disorder, the device delivers a low-level electrical pulse to the parts of the brain responsible for ADHD symptoms.... The pocket-sized device is connected by wire to a small adhesive patch placed on the child's forehead above the eyebrows. Designed to be used at home while sleeping, it delivers a "tingling" electrical stimulation to branches of the cranial nerve that delivers sensations from the face to the brain.

A clinical trial of 62 children showed that the Monarch external Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation System increases activity in the regions of the brain that regulate attention, emotion and behavior, all key components of ADHD. Compared to a placebo, children using the device had statistically significant improvement in their ADHD symptoms, the FDA said, although it could take up to four weeks to see improvement. Authors of the clinical trial called for additional research to examine if the response to treatment will last over time, and its potential impact on brain development with prolonged use....

The device was previously approved for the treatment of epilepsy and depression in Europe and Canada. Studies at UCLA found the stimulation decreased seizure activity by inhibiting overactive neurons in one section of the brain, while stimulating blood flow in the areas that control mood, attention and executive function.
CNN reports that the manufacturer's web site says the device costs around $1,000 -- and is not covered by insurance.

The FDA added that common side effects could include headache, teeth clenching, and trouble sleeping (as well as fatigue and sleepiness).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: U.S. scientists say they used HIV to make a gene therapy that cured eight infants of severe combined immunodeficiency, or "bubble boy" disease. The babies, born with little to no immune protection, now have fully functional immune systems. Untreated babies with this disorder have to live in completely sterile conditions and tend to die as infants. The gene therapy involved collecting the babies' bone marrow and correcting the genetic defect in their DNA soon after their birth. The "correct" gene -- used to fix the defect -- was inserted into an altered version of one of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Researchers said most of the babies were discharged from the hospital within one month. Dr Ewilina Mamcarz of St Jude, an author of the study, said in a statement: "These patients are toddlers now, who are responding to vaccinations and have immune systems to make all immune cells they need for protection from infections as they explore the world and live normal lives. This is a first for patients with SCID-X1 (the most common type of SCID)."

The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"New York City officials on Tuesday declared a public health emergency and ordered mandatory measles vaccinations" in an area where most of the state's 285 measles cases have occurred. The Washington Post reports: New York's mandatory vaccination order in four Brooklyn zip codes is by far the toughest action to date by state or local officials, as the disease's tally grows to 465 cases in 19 states. Officials there and elsewhere have sought to bar unvaccinated children from schools and other public places but have had limited success... The mandate orders all unvaccinated people in four zip codes to receive inoculations, including children as young as 6 months. Anyone who resists faces a misdemeanor charge and could be fined up to $1,000.
Long-time Slashdot reader Major Blud shares a BBC report that under the order, "any person living in the affected areas who has not been vaccinated must be immunised within 48 hours."

Freshly Exhumed writes: RCMP officers spotted a man driving with earbuds plugged into his iPhone. The phone was not in his hands nor on his lap, was not playing music or video, and the driver was not using it to talk to someone or navigate. The battery was, in fact, completely dead. Nonetheless, a judge has ruled that "by plugging the earbud wire into the iPhone, the defendant had enlarged the device, such that it included not only the iPhone (proper) but also attached speaker or earbuds," he wrote. "Since the earbuds were part of the electronic device and since the earbuds were in the defendant's ears, it necessarily follows that the defendant was holding the device (or part of the device) in a position in which it could be used, i.e. his ears." On the question of the battery, the judge said he relied on a 2015 precedent set in a Canadian provincial court, which says that holding an electronic device in a position where it could be used constitutes an offense, even if it is temporarily not working.

Long-time Slashdot reader frank249 brings some news from Diana Dragomir, a Hubble Fellow at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research: Diana Dragomir tweeted that the MOST Telescope "can no longer be powered up. It's had a long life, overshooting its planned one-year lifespan by a factor of 15!"

The MOST Space Telescope (which stands for Microvariability and Oscillation of Stars) was launched into space in 2003. It was the first Canadian scientific satellite in orbit in 33 years, and it is the first space telescope to be entirely designed and built in Canada. About the size and shape of a large suitcase, the satellite weighs only 54 kilograms and is equipped with an ultra high precision telescope that measures only 15 centimetres in diameter (thus the nickname "humble space telescope").

Despite its diminutive size, it is [was?] ten times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope in detecting the minuscule variations in a star's luminosity caused by vibrations that shake its surface.
Interestingly, when the Most telescope first launched back in 2003 -- it was the same long-time Slashdot reader frank249 who submitted the story.

dryriver shares a report from the BBC: Tracking airplanes anywhere in the world just got a lot easier. The U.S. firm Aireon says its new satellite surveillance network is now fully live and being trialled over the North Atlantic. The system employs a constellation of 66 (Iridium) spacecraft, which monitor the situational messages pumped out by aircraft transponders. These report a plane's position, altitude, direction and speed every eight seconds. The two big navigation management companies that marshal plane movements across the North Atlantic -- UK Nats and Nav Canada -- intend to use Aireon to transform their operations. The more detailed information they now have about the behavior of airplanes means more efficient routing can be introduced. This ought to reduce costs for airlines. Passengers should also experience fewer delays. Aireon has receivers riding piggyback on all 66 spacecraft of the Iridium sat-phone service provider. These sensors make it possible now to track planes even out over the ocean, beyond the visibility of radar -- and ocean waters cover 70% of the globe. The rapid-fire nature of the messaging also means aircraft visibility is virtually continuous. Existing data links only report ocean-crossing aircraft positions every 14 minutes. '

Canada is warming on average at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world, a new scientific report indicates. From a report: The federal government climate report also warns that changes are already evident in many parts of the country and are projected to intensify. Canada's Arctic has seen the deepest impact and will continue to warm at more than double the global rate. The report suggests that many of the effects already seen are probably irreversible. Canada's annual average temperature has increased by an estimated 1.7C (3F) since 1948, when nationwide temperatures were first recorded. The largest temperature increases have been seen in the North, the Prairies, and in northern British Columbia. Annual average temperature in northern Canada increased by approximately 2.3C.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: Canada is, on average, experiencing warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, with Northern Canada heating up at almost three times the global average, according to a new government report. Entitled "Canada's Changing Climate Report (CCCR)," the study was commissioned by the Environment and Climate Change Department and was slated to be released officially on Tuesday. That release date was moved up to Monday after CBC published its story about the leaked report.

The leaked copy of the report says that since 1948, Canada's annual average temperature over land has warmed 1.7 C, with higher rates seen in the North, the Prairies and northern British Columbia. In Northern Canada, the annual average temperature has increased by 2.3 C. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), since 1948, global average temperatures have increased by about 0.8 C. Along with these temperature increases, the CCCR says Canada is experiencing increases in precipitation (particularly in winter), "extreme fire weather" and water supply shortages in summer, and a heightened risk of coastal flooding. The document says that while warming in Canada has been the result of both human activity and natural variations in the climate, "the human factor is dominant," especially emissions of greenhouse gases.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Weeks after Steven Spielberg took a swing at Netflix and Hulu, the Hollywood legend had a change of heart about the medium, appearing at Apple's star-studded event to help the iPhone-maker launch a streaming service. The embrace comes as people are increasingly cutting their cable connections and moving to streaming services for their entertainment needs. Just last week, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a trade body that represents major Hollywood studios and Netflix, reported that video streaming services now have more subscribers worldwide (613.3 million users) than those with a cable connection (some 556 million users). Another disruption is nigh. Revenue generated by streaming services is set to surpass worldwide theatrical revenue this year, according to research firm Ampere Analysis. Media and technology companies are naturally fighting for a piece of that pie.

Here's a look at some of the biggest rivals, the markets they operate in, and how they are trying to win customers. At the top of the list is Netflix, which began offering a streaming service in 2007, long before most companies even considered getting in the ring. This gave Netflix enough breathing room to bulk up its content catalog through licensing deals with cable networks and content studios. Twelve years later, Netflix has amassed 139 million subscribers in over 190 nations and territories. Following in Netflix's footsteps is Amazon, which has also made its Prime Video streaming service available in over 190 nations and territories. [...] While YouTube is the most-consumed video streaming app in most markets, Netflix is leading in revenue worldwide. As of 2018, Netflix generated more revenue than any other video streaming service -- and in some cases, more than any app in any category -- in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the U.K., the U.S., and Vietnam, among other markets, according to App Annie.

"Mark Zuckerberg says regulators and governments should play a more active role in controlling internet content," according to the BBC, calling for new laws governing harmful content, election integrity, privacy, and data portability.

An anonymous reader quotes their report: In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Facebook's chief says the responsibility for monitoring harmful content is too great for firms alone... "Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree," Mr Zuckerberg writes... In brief, Mr Zuckerberg calls for the following things:

- Common rules that all social media sites need to adhere to, enforced by third-party bodies, to control the spread of harmful content

- All major tech companies to release a transparency report every three months, to put it on a par with financial reporting

- Stronger laws around the world to protect the integrity of elections, with common standards for all websites to identify political actors

- Laws that not only apply to candidates and elections, but also other "divisive political issues", and for laws to apply outside of official campaign periods

- New industry-wide standards to control how political campaigns use data to target voters online

- More countries to adopt privacy laws like the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force last year

- A "common global framework" that means these laws are all standardised globally, rather than being substantially different from country to country

- Clear rules about who's responsible for protecting people's data when they move it from one service to another
Zuckerberg believes the same regulations should apply to all web sites to make it easier to stop the spread of "harmful content." He also says Facebook will be creating "an independent body so people can appeal our decisions" when content is taken.

Apple today unveiled a news subscription service called Apple News+ at its services event in Cupertino, Calif. The $9.99 service gives paying subscribers access to over 300 magazines as well as select newspapers and premium digital news services. From a report: "We believe in the power of journalism and the impact it will have on your lives," said Apple CEO Tim Cook. Some of the magazines part of the service are including GQ, Esquire, Popular Science, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, New York Magazine and Vogue, as well as Variety and the Rolling Stone. Newspapers included in the package are the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. Digital publications include theSkimm, TechCrunch and The Highlight by Vox. For now, it is available just in the U.S., and come to three more markets -- Canada, Australia, and the U.K., later this year.

US companies are going to keep hiring foreign tech workers, even as the Trump administration makes doing so more difficult. For a number of US companies that means expanding their operations in Canada, where hiring foreign nationals is much easier. From a report: Demand for international workers remained high this year, according to a new Envoy Global survey of more than 400 US hiring professionals, who represent big and small US companies and have all had experience hiring foreign employees. Some 80 percent of employers expect their foreign worker headcount to either increase or stay the same in 2019, according to Envoy, which helps US companies navigate immigration laws. That tracks with US government immigration data, which shows a growing number of applicants for high-skilled tech visas, known as H-1Bs, despite stricter policies toward immigration. H-1B recipients are all backed by US companies that say they are in need of specialized labor that isn't readily available in the US -- which, in practice, includes a lot of tech workers. Major US tech companies, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon, have all been advocating for quicker and more generous high-skilled immigration policies. To do so they've increased lobbying spending on immigration.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Officials in San Francisco have proposed a new law to ban e-cigarette sales until their health effects are evaluated by the U.S. government. The law appears to be the first of its kind in the U.S. and seeks to curb a rising usage by young people. Critics, however, say it will make it harder for people to kick addiction. A second city law would bar making, selling or distributing tobacco on city property and is aimed at an e-cigarette firm renting on Pier 70. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its proposed guidelines, giving companies until 2021 to apply to have their e-cigarette products evaluated. A deadline had initially been set for August 2018, but the agency later said more preparation time was needed. San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera, one of the co-authors of the bill, which is yet to be approved, said reviews should have been done before they were sold. Juul, one of the most popular U.S. e-cigarette firms, rents space on Pier 70. It said in a statement: "This proposed legislation begs the question -- why would the city be comfortable with combustible cigarettes being on shelves when we know they kill more than 480,000 Americans per year?"

In one of the most detailed descriptions yet of the relationship between Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration during the 737 Max's certification process, the Seattle Times reports that the U.S. regulator delegated much of the safety assessment to Boeing and that the analysis the planemaker in turn delivered to the authorities had crucial flaws. 0x2A shares the report: Both Boeing and the FAA were informed of the specifics of this story and were asked for responses 11 days ago, before the second crash of a 737 MAX. [...] Several technical experts inside the FAA said October's Lion Air crash, where the MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) has been clearly implicated by investigators in Indonesia, is only the latest indicator that the agency's delegation of airplane certification has gone too far, and that it's inappropriate for Boeing employees to have so much authority over safety analyses of Boeing jets. "We need to make sure the FAA is much more engaged in failure assessments and the assumptions that go into them," said one FAA safety engineer. Going against a long Boeing tradition of giving the pilot complete control of the aircraft, the MAX's new MCAS automatic flight control system was designed to act in the background, without pilot input. It was needed because the MAX's much larger engines had to be placed farther forward on the wing, changing the airframe's aerodynamic lift. Designed to activate automatically only in the extreme flight situation of a high-speed stall, this extra kick downward of the nose would make the plane feel the same to a pilot as the older-model 737s.

Boeing engineers authorized to work on behalf of the FAA developed the System Safety Analysis for MCAS, a document which in turn was shared with foreign air-safety regulators in Europe, Canada and elsewhere in the world. The document, "developed to ensure the safe operation of the 737 MAX," concluded that the system complied with all applicable FAA regulations. Yet black box data retrieved after the Lion Air crash indicates that a single faulty sensor -- a vane on the outside of the fuselage that measures the plane's "angle of attack," the angle between the airflow and the wing -- triggered MCAS multiple times during the deadly flight, initiating a tug of war as the system repeatedly pushed the nose of the plane down and the pilots wrestled with the controls to pull it back up, before the final crash.

[...] On the Lion Air flight, when the MCAS pushed the jet's nose down, the captain pulled it back up, using thumb switches on the control column. Still operating under the false angle-of-attack reading, MCAS kicked in each time to swivel the horizontal tail and push the nose down again. The black box data released in the preliminary investigation report shows that after this cycle repeated 21 times, the plane's captain ceded control to the first officer. As MCAS pushed the nose down two or three times more, the first officer responded with only two short flicks of the thumb switches. At a limit of 2.5 degrees, two cycles of MCAS without correction would have been enough to reach the maximum nose-down effect. In the final seconds, the black box data shows the captain resumed control and pulled back up with high force. But it was too late. The plane dived into the sea at more than 500 miles per hour. [...] The former Boeing flight controls engineer who worked on the MAX's certification on behalf of the FAA said that whether a system on a jet can rely on one sensor input, or must have two, is driven by the failure classification in the system safety analysis. He said virtually all equipment on any commercial airplane, including the various sensors, is reliable enough to meet the "major failure" requirement, which is that the probability of a failure must be less than one in 100,000. Such systems are therefore typically allowed to rely on a single input sensor.