Toronto's tech scene is so hot the city created more jobs than the San Francisco Bay area, Seattle and Washington, D.C., combined last year, while leapfrogging New York in a ranking of "talent markets." From a report: Toronto was the fastest-growing tech-jobs market in 2017, according to CBRE Group's latest annual survey, released Tuesday. The city saw 28,900 tech jobs created, 14 percent more than in 2016, for a total of more than 241,000 workers, up 52 percent over the past five years, CBRE said. Downtown, tech accounted for more than a third of demand for office space. Canada's biggest city took fourth place in "tech talent," a broad measure of competitiveness, pushing New York down a notch and coming in just after the Bay Area, Seattle and the U.S. capital. CBRE ranked 50 markets across North America, using measures such as talent supply, concentration, education and cost as well as outlooks for job and rent growth for both offices and apartments. The real estate services firm cited some 5 million technology workers in the U.S. and more than 830,000 in Canada, across all sectors.

Seven o'clock in the evening is a global sweet spot for wanting to order take-away food, says an international study of internet traffic. From a report: Academics have examined patterns of looking for food online, such as pizza or Chinese meals, across the UK, US, Canada, Australia and India. They found that a similar "twin peaks" pattern appeared in all countries - at 7pm in the evening and then at 2am. The study suggests ancient "foraging" behaviour has now switched online. This big data research from biologists at the University of Aberdeen, to be published by the Royal Society, has tracked how the search for food takes place online. You can find the study here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: A salvage company has located the remains of a Russian warship lost during the the Russo-Japanese War. The battle-damaged cruiser Dmitrii Donskoi was scuttled off the coast of Korea in 1905, reportedly carrying a cargo of gold worth an estimated $130 billion in today's dollars. An international consortium of companies plans to salvage the gold.

According to the Telegraph, the Donskoi was found less than a mile off the coast of Ulleung island, at a depth of 1,423 feet in the Sea of Japan. A submersible descended to the wreck and captured an image of the ship's name on the stern in the Cyrillic alphabet. The South Korean Shinil Group, which discovered the wreck, plans to recover the gold sometime later this year with help from companies in China, Canada, and the U.K. At the time of her sinking Donskoi was reportedly carrying 5,500 boxes of gold bars and 200 tons of gold coins with a street value today of $130 billion. That's more than twice Russia's 2017 defense budget, which was $61 billion. If the treasure does materialize, the Russian government will receive half of the recovered amount. The money that's not going to Russia will reportedly be invested in a railroad line linking North Korea, South Korea, and Russia. A small percentage (10%) will also be invested in tourism projects on Ulleungdo Island, including a museum dedicated to the vessel.

CBC reports: The detailed medical histories and contact information of possibly tens of thousands of home-care patients in Ontario are allegedly being held for ransom by thieves who recently raided the computer systems of a health-care provider. CarePartners, which provides home medical care services on behalf of the Ontario government, announced last month that it had been breached. It said only that personal health and financial information of patients had been "inappropriately accessed," and did not elaborate further. However, a group claiming responsibility for the breach recently contacted CBC News and provided a sample of the data it claims to have accessed, shedding new light on the extent of the breach. The sample includes thousands of patient medical records with phone numbers and addresses, dates of birth, and health card numbers, as well as detailed medical histories including past conditions, diagnoses, surgical procedures, care plans and medications for patients across the province.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Canadian wireless users have some of the lowest data usage in the world, but Canadian telecom companies make the most money off the customers they have, a new report shows. A study by telecom comparison site Tefficient looked at data usage per SIM card in 36 countries worldwide in 2017, and how much money telecoms made per gigabyte of wireless data used. Canadians used about 1.3 GB of data per month per SIM card last year. There were only five countries where wireless customers used less than that -- the Czech Republic, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, and Greece. By contrast, Indian telecoms had the lowest revenue per gigabyte, and showed the highest growth in data usage in 2017 -- more than 300 percent.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As Netflix and Amazon search for new users abroad, they are increasingly looking to India as a big market. Once crippled by poor internet infrastructure and low household income, the world's second-largest internet market has exhibited tremendous potential in the recent years. It's proving, however, to be a tough nut to crack for the American streaming leaders.

Leading the pack in the nation is Hotstar. Owned by Star India, which is controlled by Twenty-First Century Fox, Hotstar had about 70 percent of the on-demand local streaming services market earlier this year, according to estimates by research firm Jana. The three-and-a-half-year-old service has 150 million monthly active users, CEO Ajit Mohan told CNBC in an interview. Netflix, by contrast, has fewer than one million subscribers in the country, according to industry estimates. Once considered a luxury, an increasingly growing number of Indians are giving online streaming services a try. Companies have taken notice: More than 35 streaming services have launched or expanded their businesses in India in the last three and a half years, with many more planning to enter Bollywood soon. [...] Analysts say sporting events and local content are proving crucial in bringing new users to video platforms and then keeping them online, two areas where international giants are struggling. Hotstar, which offers much of its content to users at no charge (instead relying on ads to make revenue), charges $3 for its premium offering. In contrast, Netflix charges Indians about $8 a month.

Sports streaming in particular is helping local firms gain new users, the report said. You might remember Hotstar, which entered the US and Canada markets, set a new global concurrent record in late April, and now it turns out SonyLiv is getting more concurrent viewers to the FIFA World Cup in India than Fox Sports is generating on its digital platform in the US.

As the U.K. begins a two-week heat wave, one pedestrian apparently found his leg sinking into tarmac, which had melted, requiring a call to emergency rescue services.

"All-time heat records have been set all over the world during the past week," reports the Washington Post, in an article titled "Red-Hot Planet," which they've updated throughout the week with new all-time heat records. From the normally mild summer climes of Ireland, Scotland and Canada to the scorching Middle East to Southern California, numerous locations in the Northern Hemisphere have witnessed their hottest weather ever recorded over the past week.... The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports the heat is to blame for at least 54 deaths in southern Quebec, mostly in and near Montreal, which endured record high temperatures. In Northern Siberia, along the coast of the Arctic Ocean -- where weather observations are scarce -- model analyses showed temperatures soaring 40 degrees above normal on July 5, to over 90 degrees...

On Thursday, Africa likely witnessed its hottest temperature ever reliably measured. Ouargla, Algeria soared to 124.3 degrees (51.3 Celsius). If verified, it would surpass Africa's previous highest reliable temperature measurement of 123.3 degrees (50.7 Celsius) set July 13, 1961, in Morocco. No single record, in isolation, can be attributed to global warming. But collectively, these heat records are consistent with the kind of extremes we expect to see increase in a warming world.
Nasdaq Inc. even warned customers that high humidity in New Jersey was slowing the radio transmissions needed for high-speed trading, according to an article shared by Slashdot reader narcoossee. And Southern California has also experienced record-setting temperatures "well above 110 degrees across the region," sparking brush fires that burned homes in two counties.

Last July several U.S. cities experienced their hottest month ever, including Reno, Salt Lake City, and Miami. And Death Valley, California maintained an average temperature of 107.4 degrees for an entire month, the hottest month ever recorded on earth. "The temperature didn't fall below 89 degrees at any point in the month of July at Death Valley," reports the Washington Post, adding "On three nights, the 'low' temperature was 102-103 degrees."

And last month the Middle East city Quriyat (in Oman) endured more than two full days in which the temperature never dropped below 108.7 degrees.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For people who put down a $1,000 deposit for a Tesla Model 3 as long as two years ago, the big day has arrived. Specifically, the day has arrived when they can give Tesla another $2,500 and then wait a few more months for their car to arrive. Days before the end of the second quarter, Tesla is now allowing all reservation holders in the United States and Canada to place orders for the Model 3. Customers will be able to choose between several variants of the Model 3 -- including the high-end "performance" model -- as well as choosing colors and option packages. However, the low-end version of the Model 3 with its long-promised $35,000 price tag isn't available to order yet.

Each customer will get a specific delivery estimate based on the model they choose and their position on the waiting list. A typical delivery window is two to four months. While the original $1,000 Model 3 deposit was fully refundable, customers who pay the extra $2,500 will be locked in three days after placing an order, the company told CNBC. That isn't a new requirement -- a Tesla spokeswoman told Ars that the company has long asked customers to pay a $2,500 deposit when they order other Tesla models.

Facebook's controversial Messenger Kids app is heading outside the U.S. to Canada and Peru. From a report: As part of the expansion, the social networking giant said Friday that it would also debut Spanish and French language versions of the children's messaging app that are now available in all three countries where the service is available. Facebook introduced Messenger Kids in December, pitching it as a safer way for children under 13 to chat with friends while sending them silly GIFs, emoji, and other goofy digital imagery. Unlike the core Facebook social networking service or other messaging apps, Facebook said that Messenger Kids does not display any online ads or allow kids to buy things within the app.

Lindsay, a compact rectangle amid the lakes northeast of Toronto, is at the heart of one of the world's biggest tests of a guaranteed basic income. Technology Review: In a three-year pilot funded by the provincial government, about 4,000 people in Ontario are getting monthly stipends to boost them to at least 75 percent of the poverty line. That translates to a minimum annual income of $17,000 in Canadian dollars (about $13,000 US) for single people, $24,000 for married couples. Lindsay has about half the people in the pilot -- some 10 percent of the town's population. The report outlines that the Canadian province's vision for a basic income -- and the underlying experiment -- differs from that of the one we have seen in Silicon Valley. The report continues: The Canadians are testing it as an efficient antipoverty mechanism, a way to give a relatively small segment of the population more flexibility to find work and to strengthen other strands of the safety net. That's not what Silicon Valley seems to imagine, which is a universal basic income that placates broad swaths of the population.

The most obvious problem with that idea? Math. Many economists concluded long ago that it would be too expensive, especially when compared with the cost of programs to create new jobs and train people for them. That's why the idea didn't take off after tests in the 1960s and '70s. It's largely why Finland recently abandoned a basic-income plan after a small test.

Slashdot reader grep -v '.*' * shares a surprising story. The Kansas City Star profiles the victim of a three-year con that started with an email to a Yahoo inbox back in 2005. A decade ago, Fred Haines was wandering the Wichita airport looking for a Nigerian man hauling two chests full of cash. After an hour of waiting and asking around, he finally came to the realization that the $65 million Nigerian fortune he thought he was inheriting was not coming after all. What is now coming, though, is the $110,000 he had been scammed out of, thanks to the work of the Kansas Attorney General's Office.

From 2005 to 2008, swindlers hoodwinked Haines, a self-employed handyman in Wichita, into spending thousands in pursuit of an imaginary inheritance from a Nigerian government official -- a con known as the Nigerian Prince Scam. Haines re-mortgaged his house three times in the process. Last year, in a settlement with the Department of Justice, Western Union admitted it knew some of its employees had conspired with scam artists to bilk people out of money and had failed to fix the problem. The company set aside $586 million to create a fund to refund victims across the U.S. and Canada... All victims who'd sent money to hucksters using the service were able to request refunds, but only those who had complained to law enforcement or Western Union were notified directly of the settlement.

"It got to the point where they were showing me that the president of Nigeria had sent me a letter. It had his picture on it and everything," Haines said. "I looked it up on the computer to see what the Nigerian president looked like, and it was him." Once, he received an email claiming to be from Robert Mueller, who was then the FBI director. The email was addressed to Haines, code-name "B-DOG," and it was signed with the FBI's address and official seal. "I wish you can remove doubt and suspicious and go ahead I assured you that you will never regret this fund release," the email said in part.
Haines is one of 344 victims who recovered a total of $1,758,988 through the Kansas Attorney General's office -- though when the office sent out 25,000 letters to possible scam victims, many of them were now skeptical of the promise of unclaimed money, and "Some were even angry when employees called to follow up on those who hadn't responded."

Federal authorities announced Monday that they had "disrupted" what they call "Business Email Compromise" schemes, which involve a malicious actor sending a phishing email and somehow convincing employees with access to a company's financial credentials to transfer money fraudulently. From a report: The FBI added that $2.4 million dollars was seized, while $14 million in "fraudulent wire transfers" was recovered. Seventy-four people were arrested worldwide, including 42 in the United States, 29 in Nigeria, and three others in Canada, Mauritius, and Poland. "Fraudsters can rob people of their life's savings in a matter of minutes," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. "These are malicious and morally repugnant crimes. The Department of Justice has taken aggressive action against fraudsters in recent months, conducting the largest sweep of fraud against American seniors in history back in February." The Department of Justice did not immediately provide a full list of those arrested, or the criminal complaints, but it said that, "since the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) began formally keeping track of BEC and its variant, email account compromise (EAC), there has been a loss of over $3.7 billion reported to the IC3."

An anonymous reader writes: Last year, Canada introduced a new lottery system used to extend permanent-resident status to the parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens. The process was designed to randomly select applicants in order to make the process fairer than the old first-come, first-served system. There's just one problem: the software used to run the lottery isn't actually random. The Globe and Mail reported the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) uses Microsoft Excel to run the immigration lottery to select 10,000 people for permanent resident status from a field of about 100,000 applications received each year. Experts warned that the random number generating function in Excel isn't actually random and may put some applicants at a disadvantage.

First, it's best to understand just how the lottery system works. An Access to Information request filed by The Globe and Mail shows that IRCC inputs the application number for every person entering the lottery into Excel, then assigns them a random number to each using a variation of the program's RAND command. They then sort the list from smallest to largest based on the random number assigned and take the first 10,000 applications with the lowest numbers. The system puts a lot of faith in Excel's random function, which it might not deserve. According to Universite de Montreal computer science professor Pierre L'Ecuyer, Excel is "very bad" at generating random numbers because it relies on an old generator that is out of date. He also warned that Excel doesn't pass statistical tests and is less random than it appears, which means some people in the lottery may actually have a lower chance of being selected than others.

"Thousands of tons of material left curbside for recycling in dozens of U.S. cities and towns -- including several in Oregon -- have gone to landfills," reports the New York Times. Slashdot reader schwit1 summarizes their report: One big reason: China has essentially shut the door to U.S. recyclables. The Times notes that about a third of recyclables gets shipped abroad, with China the biggest importer. But starting this year, China imposed strict rules on what it will accept, effectively banning most of it. That, the Times reports, has forced many recycling companies who can't find other takers to dump recyclables into landfills.
"Recyclers in Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany and other parts of Europe have also scrambled to find alternatives," reports the Times, though most major U.S. cities aren't affected, and countries like India, Vietnam and Indonesia are now importing more materials.

But at least some recycling companies are simply stockpiling material, "while looking for new processors, or hoping that China reconsiders its policy."

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: Vint Cerf notes that the world ran out of IPv4 address space around 2011, some 13 years after internet engineers started sketching out IPv6, under the belief back then that IPv4 addresses would run out imminently. Since 'World IPv6 Launch' on June 6, 2012, significant progress has been made. Back then just one percent of users accessed Google services over IPv6. Now roughly a quarter of users access Google over IPv6. But Cerf noted that "it's certainly been a long time since the standards were put in place, and it's time to get with the program"...

The Internet Society's snapshot of IPv6 in 2018 notes that Google reports that 49 countries deliver more than five percent of traffic over IPv6. There are also 24 countries where IPv6 traffic is greater than 15 percent, including the US, Canada, Brazil, Finland, India, and Belgium. Additionally, 17 percent of the top million Alexa sites work with IPv6, while 28 percent of the top 1,000 Alexa sites do. Enterprise operations are IPv6's "elephant in the room", according to the Internet Society. Around 25 percent of all internet-connected networks advertise IPv6 connectivity, and the Internet Society suspects that most of the networks that don't are enterprise networks.

Ontario law defines distracted driving as "holding or using a handheld wireless communication device" -- and a judge just fined Victoria Ambrose $400 for checking her Apple Watch while waiting at a stoplight. Long-time Slashdot reader innocent_white_lamb quotes the National Post: Even with its miniaturization and trendy technology, an Apple Watch is no safer "than a cellphone taped to someone's wrist," said a justice of the peace, while convicting a Guelph woman this month of holding or using a hand-held wireless communication device while driving... "The key to determining this matter is distraction. It is abundantly clear from the evidence that Ms. Ambrose was distracted..."
When the light turned green Ambrose had remained parked at an intersection, according to the officer who ticketed her, though two cars ahead of her had moved forward. Ambrose testified that she was only checking the time, but the officer told the court he'd seen Ambrose check her watch four different times.

A new study by game research firm SuperData Research and payment company PayPal found that eSports and game videos are driving explosive growth in livestreams. But PayPal also found a gender imbalance in pay. Women are less likely to be paid for their streams than men. VentureBeat reports: PayPal said that 34 percent of livestream viewers in the U.S. have spent more than $50 on livestream content in the past few months. But despite the growth in spending, almost half of women content creators (43 percent globally, 47 percent in the U.S.) don't get paid for what they create. The U.S. had the largest gender pay gap of the countries surveyed: Almost half as many men (24 percent) do not get paid for content they create. Globally, active paying gamers polled shop across 14 different gaming platforms and nearly 30 different storefronts over the last three months, an incredible variety.

In the U.S., respondents surveyed purchased from 26 different gaming storefronts -- the third most in the world, behind Russia (27), and Australia and Canada (28 each). While Steam is highly popular among millennials globally (31 percent buy from Steam), GameStop was resoundingly popular, with 45 percent of U.S. millennial respondents reporting shopping there for gaming content. In most countries, in-game spending is within a few dollars of average spend on full games. Surprisingly, in-game spending is skewing higher among older U.S. players: those aged 35-and-over have spent $50 on average, compared to $40 for those aged 18 to 34. Meanwhile, younger gamers are spending more in full-game downloads: $63, versus $48 for gamers 35-and-over.

The computer hacker who worked with Russian spies was sentenced to five years in prison Tuesday for his role in a massive security breach at Yahoo. "U.S. Judge Vince Chhabria also fined Karim Baratov $250,000 during a sentencing hearing in San Francisco," The Associated Press reports. From the report: Baratov, 23, pleaded guilty in November to nine felony hacking charges. He acknowledged in his plea agreement that he began hacking as a teen seven years ago and charged customers $100 per hack to access web-based emails. Prosecutors allege he was "an international hacker for hire" who indiscriminately hacked for clients he did not know or vet, including dozens of jobs paid for by Russia's Federal Security Service. Baratov, who was born in Kazakhstan but lived in Toronto, Canada, where he was arrested last year, charged customers to obtain another person's webmail passwords by tricking them to enter their credentials into a fake password reset page. Prosecutors said Russian security service hired Baratov to target dozens of email accounts using information obtained from the Yahoo hack.

"Deterrence is particularly important in a case like this," the judge said during the hearing. He rejected prosecutors call for a prison sentence of nearly 10 years, noting Baratov's age and clean criminal record prior to his arrest. Baratov has been in custody since his arrest last year. He told the judge Tuesday that his time behind bars has been "a very humbling and eye-opening experience." He apologized to those he hacked and promised "to be a better man" and obey the law upon his release. The judge said it is likely Baratov will be deported once he is released from prison.

New submitter Heritype writes: Bank of Montreal, Canada's fourth biggest lender, said on Monday it was contacted by fraudsters on Sunday who claimed they were in possession of the personal and financial information of a limited number of the bank's customers. The bank said it believed the attack originated from outside the country and was confident the exposures that led to the theft of customer data had been closed off.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Canada's fifth biggest lender, said fraudsters contacted the lender on Sunday claiming they had electronically stolen personal and account information of 40,000 customers of its Simplii direct banking brand.
Other Canadian banks said they had not been affected. Further reading: BMO and CIBC-owned Simplii Financial reveal hacks of customer data.

An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press: Fiat Chrysler is recalling more than 5.3 million vehicles in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere because in rare but terrifying circumstances, drivers may not be able to turn off the cruise control. The company is warning owners not to use cruise control until the cars, SUVs and trucks can be fixed with a software update. Fiat Chrysler says the condition can occur if the cruise control accelerates at the same time an electrical short-circuit happens. But the brakes are designed to overpower the engine and the vehicles could still be stopped...

In the complaint filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an owner from Olathe, Kansas, said a 2017 Dodge Journey SUV rental vehicle was being driven about 70 miles per hour with the cruise control on when the windshield wipers came on by themselves and the throttle locked up. The owner, who was not identified in the agency's complaint database, wrote that the cruise control would not disengage by tapping the brakes or turning off the button. The driver was able to slam on the brakes and get the SUV to the side of the road. "It was still running at an engine speed to support 70 mph and fighting the brakes," the driver wrote. The engine stop button also wouldn't work, but the driver was able to halt the SUV and shift into park while the brakes "smoked significantly."
The recall "includes 15 Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler and Ram models from six model years" which have automatic transmissions and gas engines, according to the Associated Press -- 4.8 million in America, plus another 490,000 in Canada and "an undetermined number" in other countries.

You can check if your vehicle is affected by this (or any other) recall by entering its VIN number at NHTSA.gov. U.S. safety officials suggest checking whether your vehicle has been recalled "at least twice per year."