Chinese officials said last week that a foreign intelligence agency hacked several of its airlines in 2020 and stole passenger travel records. From a report: The hacking campaign was disclosed last week by officials from the Ministry of State Security, China's civilian intelligence, security, and secret police agency. The hacking campaign was discovered after one of China's airlines reported a security breach to MSS officials in January 2020. Investigators said they linked the hacks to a custom trojan that the attackers used to exfiltrate passenger details and other data from this first target. A subsequent investigation found other airlines compromised in the same way. "After an in-depth investigation, it was confirmed that the attacks were carefully planned and secretly carried out by an overseas spy intelligence agency," the MSS said in a press release distributed via state news channels last Monday. The MSS did not formally attribute the attack to any foreign agency or country.

Phoronix reports: System76's Pop!_OS Linux distribution already has their own "COSMIC" desktop that is based on GNOME, but moving ahead they are working on their own Rust-written desktop that is not based on GNOME or any existing desktop environment.

Stemming from a Reddit discussion over the possibility of seeing a KDE flavor of Pop!_OS, it was brought up by one of their own engineers they are working on their "own desktop". System76 engineer and Pop!_OS maintainer Michael Murphy "mmstick" commented that System76 will be its own desktop. When further poked about that whether that means a fork from GNOME, the response was "No it is its own thing written in Rust."

Word of System76 making their "own" desktop not based on GNOME does follow some recent friction between Pop!_OS and GNOME developers over their approach to theming and customizations.
Or, as Murphy wrote (in response to a later comment): What are you expecting us to do? We have a desktop environment that is a collection of GNOME Shell extensions which break every GNOME Shell release. Either we move towards maintaining tens of thousands of lines of monkey patches, or we do it the right way and make the next step a fully fledged desktop environment equal to GNOME Shell.
In other comments Murphy clarified that essentially the gist of it would be an independent/distro-agnostic desktop environment, and that they'd be "using tooling that already exists (mutter, kwin, wlroots), but implementing the surrounding shell in Rust from scratch..." And he added later that "We already do our best to follow freedesktop specifications with our software. So there's no reason to think we'd do otherwise."

One of the most interesting exchanges happened when one long-time Reddit user questioned the need for another desktop. That user had posted, "Linux is great, choices are great, but our biggest problem is that in the pursuit of choices for the sake of choices we have a ton of projects that are 95% of the way to prime time readiness, but none that are fully there, because instead of fixing problems, everyone decides they just want to start over."

Murphy responded: "You have it backwards. Choice is the best part about open source. None of us would be here today if people weren't brave enough to take the next step with a new solution to an existing problem..."

UPDATED: Earlier this week ZDNet reported that Facebook's parent company Meta "has granted the Kazakhstan government direct access to its content reporting system," as part of a joint agreement to work on removing content that is deemed harmful on social network platforms like Facebook and Instagram," with the agreement focusing on protecting children.

But the Washington Post clarified tonight that in fact Kazakhstan's statement "was apparently released independent of Facebook." Meta spokesman Ben McConaghy said in an email that the company has "a dedicated online channel for governments around the world to report content to us that they believe violates local law."

"We follow a consistent global process to assess individual requests — independent from any government — in line with Facebook's policies, local laws and international human rights standards," he added. "This process is the same in Kazakhstan as it is for other countries around the world."
Here's ZDNet's original report: In a joint statement, the Ministry of Information and Social Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the social media giant said the agreement, which is the first of its kind in Central Asia, would help increase the efficiency and effectiveness to counter the spread of illegal content. Giving the Kazakhstan government access to its content reporting system will allow the government to report content that may violate Facebook's global content policy and local content laws in Kazakhstan, Facebook said. Under the agreement, both parties will also set up regular communication, including having an authorised representative from Facebook's regional office work with the Ministry on various policy issues.

"Facebook is delighted to work with the government of Kazakhstan together, particularly in the aspect of online safety for children," Facebook regional public policy director George Chen said in a statement.

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike quotes the aviation news site AVweb's report on a "Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin" and "Airworthiness Directive" being issued by America's aircraft-regulating Federal Aviation Administration "concerning the rollout of 5G cellular phone service in 46 major metropolitan areas of the U.S." (reportedly happening on December 5th). The actions are expected to limit the use of automated systems on aircraft that rely on radar altimeters (also called radio altimeters) and it's possible that flight delays and cancellations will result. Reuters also quoted a letter from FAA Deputy Administrator Bradley Mims that says the agency shares "the deep concern about the potential impact to aviation safety resulting from interference to radar altimeter performance from 5G network operations in the C band."

In an auction of radio spectrum last year, the major telecoms paid a total of $78 billion in an FCC auction to get access to a thin slice of the finite range of available radio frequencies to carry 5G signals. Those signals will be in the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz part of the so-called C-Band, which is apparently the sweet spot for carrying the data-heavy 5G signals. Radar altimeters operate in the 4.2-4.4 GHz frequency range (their sweet spot) and the fear is that the nearby powerful cell signals will cause interference for the avionics. The FCC approved the use of the spectrum for 5G saying "well-designed [radio altimeter] equipment should not ordinarily receive any significant interference (let alone harmful interference)."

But aviation groups say the risk for thousands of aircraft is real and the FAA seems to agree.

A wild bear broke into a parked car looking for food. This set AI pundit Lance Eliot a-thinking... The AI driving system of a self-driving car is always intact. A parked self-driving car is immediately able to become a moving car.... If the self-driving car is making use of its object detection system, even though the autonomous vehicle is parked, the AI driving capability would be alerted at [a hypothetical] pending crash that is about to occur... Depending upon what the AI developers anticipated, the AI driving system might activate the self-driving car and attempt to quickly drive away from the converging human-driven car.
For most makers of self-driving cars, this is an obscure "edge" case. But Eliot imagines a world where a self-driving car is parked next to a forest... The human hiker has left the autonomous vehicle and has trekked somewhere deep in the woods. A bear meanders into the parking lot, looking for a free meal. If the AI driving system is using its object detection features, the bear would likely be detected. When the bear decides to wander directly toward the self-driving car, the AI driving system might activate the autonomous vehicle and drive away from the bear.

It is unclear if the bear will somehow divine that the self-driving car is capable of moving on its own accord... After a while, it seems plausible to suggest that bears will be concerned that those free meal containers (on wheels) seem to move away upon the bear approaching. This will possibly discourage some bears and they will steer clear of parked cars. Other bears might turn this into a game. Kind of hide-and-seek, of sorts. Approach a car, it moves away. Fun! Walk over to the car and see which way it goes next. A grand old time in the parking lot, that's for sure.
And as long as we're telling shaggy bear stories... The odds are that self-driving cars will be designed differently on the interior than are conventional human-driven cars. For example, there is no need for a steering wheel and nor any need for the pedals. Those will no longer be included. The interior is opened up to allow for perhaps swiveling seats, possibly reclining seats so that you can sleep on a long journey inside a self-driving car. Given that type of interior, the bear is bound to find things a lot more comfortable inside a self-driving car than a conventional human-driven car. The next thing you know, bears will fall in love with self-driving cars, doing so because it is a quiet, spacious, and secure place to rest and relax. No need to worry about predators getting at the bear while relishing the plush and roomy interior....

A second question is whether the bears might figure out how to communicate with the AI driving system. You know, bears are pretty sharp. Perhaps a truly enterprising bear could convince the AI to take the bear for a cozy ride while inside the self-driving car.

Don't be especially surprised if you start to see bears riding around in self-driving cars.

And please remember, you heard about it here, first.

"A drone laden with explosives targeted the residence of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in Baghdad early on Sunday," reports Reuters, "in what the Iraqi military called an attempted assassination, but said Kadhimi escaped unhurt." The attack, which security sources said injured several members of Kadhimi's personal protection, came after protests in the Iraqi capital over the result of a general election last month turned violent. The groups leading protests and complaints about the result of the October vote are heavily-armed Iran-backed militias which lost much of their parliamentary power in the election... No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Kadhimi's residence in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, which houses government buildings and foreign embassies...

Security sources told Reuters that six members of Kadhimi's personal protection force stationed outside his residence had been injured.

"Authorities were able to find a missing 16-year-old girl after she caught the attention of a driver by using hand gestures popularized on the social media platform TikTok," reports NBC News: According to the Laurel County Sheriff's Office in Kentucky, the girl was inside a silver-colored Toyota car when the driver saw her using hand signals known on TikTok "to represent violence at home — I need help — domestic violence." After recognizing what the signals meant and seeing that the teen "appeared to be in distress," the driver called 911, the sheriff's office said in a statement. The alert led to the arrest of 61-year-old James Herbert Brick of Cherokee, North Carolina, Thursday afternoon while driving near a Kentucky interstate.

The teenager found inside the car Brick was driving had been reported missing by her parents in Asheville, North Carolina, Tuesday morning, Laurel County Sheriff John Root said in a statement. The girl also told authorities she had traveled with Brick through North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio, according to the statement....

"In the early hours of October 30, 1961, a bomber took off from an airstrip in northern Russia and began its flight through cloudy skies over the frigid Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya," writes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Slashdot reader DanDrollette (who is also the deputy editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) shares their report on "The secret history of the world's largest nuclear detonation, coming to light after 60 years." Slung below the plane's belly was a nuclear bomb the size of a small school bus — the largest and most powerful bomb ever created.

At 11:32 a.m., the bombardier released the weapon. As the bomb fell, an enormous parachute unfurled to slow its descent, giving the pilot time to retreat to a safe distance. A minute or so later, the bomb detonated. A cameraman watching from the island recalled:

A fire-red ball of enormous size rose and grew. It grew larger and larger, and when it reached enormous size, it went up. Behind it, like a funnel, the whole earth seemed to be drawn in. The sight was fantastic, unreal, and the fireball looked like some other planet. It was an unearthly spectacle...!

Within ten minutes, it had reached a height of 42 miles and a diameter of some 60 miles. One civilian witness remarked that it was "as if the Earth was killed." Decades later, the weapon would be given the name it is most commonly known by today: Tsar Bomba, meaning "emperor bomb...." at 50 megatons, it was more than 3,300 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that killed at least 70,000 people in Hiroshima, and more than 40 times as powerful as the largest nuclear bomb in the US arsenal today. Its single test represents about one tenth of the total yield of all nuclear weapons ever tested by all nations...

Within two years, though, the Soviet Union and the United States would sign and ratify the Limited Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, and the 50-megaton bomb would fall into relative obscurity.
Drollette notes that "The United States dismissed the gigantic Tsar Bomba as a stunt, but behind the scenes it was working to build a 'superbomb' of its own."

The article argues there a lesson for our times in the 1961 episode, calling it "a potent example of how nationalism, fear, and high-technology can combine in a fashion that is ultimately dangerous, wasteful, and pointless."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A tweak to the iPhone's repairability that has been long prophesied and feared has finally come to pass, giving staggering new urgency for legislation that makes repair more accessible: The iPhone 13's screen cannot be replaced without special software controlled by Apple. This is a devastating blow to independent repair shops, who make the vast majority of their money doing screen replacements, and, specifically, make the vast majority of their money doing iPhone screen replacements. According to iFixit, replacing the screen on an iPhone 13 disables Face ID functionality. That's because the screen itself is paired to a small microcontroller attached to the display. Replacing a cracked screen with a new screen will disable this pairing, thus breaking a core piece of functionality in the phone. An authorized Apple repair tech can pair a new screen to an iPhone with the click of a few buttons using proprietary Apple tech. Everyone else will have a much harder time. "It is still possible to change a screen on an iPhone 13," notes Motherboard. "The difference is that in order to do so now, this microcontroller needs to be removed from the broken screen and resoldered onto the new screen (after the existing microcontroller on that screen is removed). Doing this requires microsoldering, which requires the use of a microscope and a highly skilled technician."

In an email to Motherboard, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens said: "This is a clear case of a manufacturer using their power to prevent competition and monopolize an industry. Society loses: small repair shops will wither and fade away and consumers will be left with no choice but to pay top dollar for repairs or replace their device."

A week on from its Connect conference, Meta is moving ahead with rebranding the Oculus Quest 2 as the Meta Quest 2. UploadVR reports: In last week's keynote, CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Meta is the new corporate company name for Facebook. Almost all individual services under the company's umbrella, including Whatapp, Instagram and the actual Facebook social platform itself will keep their names. But, just after the keynote, Meta's Andrew Bosworth revealed that the Oculus brand covering VR products and services would start to be switched out with Meta branding. Bosworth explained that "you'll start to see the shift from Oculus Quest from Facebook to Meta Quest and Oculus App to Meta Quest App over time." Turns out "over time" was just over a week -- the Meta Quest 2 branding is already featured prominently in a new blog post on the official Oculus webpage. Confused yet?

The post outlines a new installation at Downtown Disney District at the Disneyland Resort showcasing Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy's Edge on the "Meta Quest 2." Promotional art for the installation seen above also carries the Meta Quest 2 logo despite the fact that the Oculus icon is front and center of the art. Unfortunately, we can't make out if the logo on the Quest headset itself is for Oculus or Meta. But if you try and buy a Quest 2 at the top of the same page, it's still branded as the Oculus Quest 2 for now.

"Intel is gearing up to go to a war with Nvidia," writes Slashdot reader labloke11. "They have their OneAPI and their GPU. It will be interesting... For me, I like competition." Phoronix reports: While Intel Alder Lake is dominating today's news cycle, Intel and Microsoft also announced today that they have brought oneAPI Level Zero and Intel OpenCL support to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) while employing Intel graphics hardware acceleration. Similar to NVIDIA bringing CUDA and their accelerated GPU support to WSL2 as well as similar efforts by AMD on the Radeon side, Intel and Microsoft are now having Intel graphics compute working within the Linux confines on Windows 11 or Windows 10 21'H2. Hardware-accelerated oneAPI Level Zero, OpenVINO, and OpenCL on Intel graphics hardware can now be enjoyed within the WSL2 environment when using the latest updates and drivers. Like with the rest of the WSL2 stack and capabilities from other GPU vendors, this is at a near-native level of performance. More information can be found via the Microsoft Command Line blog and Intel blog.

A flagship framework used by Google and scores of other advertisers for gathering claimed consent from web users for creepy ad targeting looks set to be found in breach of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). TechCrunch reports: A year ago the IAB Europe's self-styled Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) was found to fail to comply with GDPR principles of transparency, fairness and accountability, and the lawfulness of processing in a preliminary report by the investigatory division of the Belgian data protection authority. The complaint then moved to the litigation chamber of the DPA -- and a whole year passed without a decision being issued, in keeping with the glacial pace of privacy enforcement against adtech in the region.

But the authority is now in the process of finalizing a draft ruling, according to a press statement put out by the IAB Europe today. And the verdict it's expecting is that the TCF breaches the GDPR. It will also find that the IAB Europe is itself in breach. Oopsy. The online advertising industry body looks to be seeking to get ahead of a nuclear finding of non-compliance, writing that the DPA "will apparently identify infringements of the GDPR by IAB Europe," and trying to further spin the finding as "fixable" within six months (it doesn't say how, however) -- while simultaneously implying the breach finding may not itself be fixed because other EU DPAs still need to weigh in on the decision as part of the GDPR's standard cooperation procedure (which applies to cross-border complaints).

In terms of timing, a final verdict on the investigation is still likely months off -- and may not emerge 'til deep into 2022. Appeals are also almost inevitable. But the tracking industry's problems are starting to look, well, appropriately sticky. In the short term, the IAB says it expects a draft ruling to be shared by Belgium with other EU DPAs in the next two to three weeks -- at which point they get 30 days to review it and potentially file objections. If DPAs don't agree with the lead authority's finding and can't agree among themselves, the European Data Protection Board may need to step in and take a binding decision -- such as happened in another cross-border case against WhatsApp (which led to a $267 million fine, a larger penalty that the lead DPA in that case had originally proposed).

Amazon's Kuiper Systems asked U.S. regulators for permission to launch another 4,538 satellites that would bolster its constellation as it competes with Elon Musk's SpaceX for broadband-from-space customers. From a report: The additions would bring Kuiper's constellation to 7,774 satellites, the company said in a filing Thursday with the Federal Communications Commission. The companies are joining a rush to offer internet service from orbits near the Earth, spurred in a part by decreasing launch costs. Low orbits offer minimal lag time for data to bounce between a user on the ground and the spacecraft. Kuiper's request was among nine applications, submitted under an FCC deadline, that requested authorization for a total of more than 35,000 spacecraft. That's more than seven times the number aloft today. Those figures don't include nearly 30,000 additional satellites proposed by segment leader SpaceX, which already has launched more than 1,700 of its Starlink spacecraft.

Two U.S. senators have introduced bipartisan legislation that seeks to make it harder for Amazon and other tech giants to make acquisitions. From a report: The office of Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, said on Friday that she and Republican Tom Cotton had introduced a bill targeting such companies as Alphabet's Google and Facebook. The bill would make it easier for the government to stop deals it believes break antitrust law by requiring the companies to prove to a judge that the deals are good for competition, and therefore legal. A similar bill, introduced by Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries and others, has been approved in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and awaits a vote by the full House. Traditionally it is up to the government in antitrust enforcement to show a particular transaction would cause prices to rise or is illegal for other reasons. "We're increasingly seeing companies choose to buy their rivals rather than compete," Klobuchar said in a statement. "This bipartisan legislation will put an end to those anticompetitive acquisitions by making it more difficult for dominant digital platforms to eliminate their competitors and enhance the platform's market power."

Facebook researchers have found that 1 in 8 of its users report engaging in compulsive use of social media that impacts their sleep, work, parenting or relationships, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. From the report: These patterns of what the company calls problematic use mirror what is popularly known as internet addiction. They were perceived by users to be worse on Facebook than any other major social-media platform, which all seek to keep users coming back, the documents show. A Facebook team focused on user well-being suggested a range of fixes, and the company implemented some, building in optional features to encourage breaks from social media and to dial back the notifications that can serve as a lure to bring people back to the platform. Facebook shut down the team in late 2019. A company spokeswoman said Facebook in recent months has begun formulating a new effort to address what it calls problematic use alongside other well-being concerns, such as body image and mental health. The company has been public about its desire to address these problems, said Dani Lever, the spokeswoman, in a statement. Some people have struggles with other technologies, including television and smartphones, she said.

The suit, filed by the now defunct photo start-up Phhhoto, accused the social network of stalling on a deal and then putting it out of business. From a report: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, downloaded a popular new app, Phhhoto, on Aug. 8, 2014, and took a selfie. Other Facebook executives and product managers soon followed suit. The social network then made overtures to integrate Phhhoto. But the interest of Facebook's top executives in Phhhoto was just a show, according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday in the Eastern District of New York by the start-up, which is now defunct. Instead, Facebook simply wanted to squash the competition, according to the suit, which accused the company of antitrust violations. In the suit, Phhhoto's founders -- Champ Bennett, Omar Elsayed and Russell Armand -- claim that after Mr. Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives downloaded their app and approached them about a partnership, no deal materialized. Facebook instead launched a competing product that mirrored Phhhoto's features. Facebook also suppressed Phhhoto's content within its photo-sharing app, Instagram, the suit says.

Phhhoto is represented by Gary L. Reback, a well-known lawyer. In the 1990s, Mr. Reback persuaded the Justice Department to sue Microsoft for violating antitrust laws, a case that Microsoft ultimately settled in 2001. Phhhoto's suit seeks unspecified monetary damages from Facebook. The lawsuit stands out because of Mr. Zuckerberg's personal involvement, Mr. Reback said in an interview. He called Mr. Zuckerberg "the monopolist's C.E.O" and said the Facebook founder had engaged in "anticompetitive conduct to an extent not seen since Bill Gates," one of the founders of Microsoft.

The Information today shared alleged details about future Apple silicon chips that will succeed the first-generation M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chips, which are manufactured based on Apple chipmaking partner TSMC's 5nm process. MacRumors adds: The report claims that Apple and TSMC plan to manufacture second-generation Apple silicon chips using an enhanced version of TSMC's 5nm process, and the chips will apparently contain two dies, which can allow for more cores. These chips will likely be used in the next MacBook Pro models and other Mac desktops, the report says. Apple is planning a "much bigger leap" with its third-generation chips, some of which will be manufactured with TSMC's 3nm process and have up to four dies, which the report says could translate into the chips having up to 40 compute cores. For comparison, the M1 chip has an 8-core CPU and the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips have 10-core CPUs, while Apple's high-end Mac Pro tower can be configured with up to a 28-core Intel Xeon W processor.

One of Mark Zuckerberg's first steps toward building the metaverse may be physical instead of virtual. From a report: Meta, the social media company formerly known as Facebook, has discussed opening retail stores that will eventually span the world, said people with knowledge of the project and company documents viewed by The New York Times. The stores would be used to introduce people to devices made by the company's Reality Labs division, such as virtual reality headsets and, eventually, augmented reality glasses, they said.

These devices are gateways to the metaverse, a futuristic digital world where people move from virtual to augmented versions of reality almost seamlessly. Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, last week renamed his company Meta and laid out a vision for pursuing the metaverse as the next social platform. The stores would help show people that virtual reality and augmented reality can be fun and exciting, exactly the way Mr. Zuckerberg sees it. The aim of the stores is to make the world "more open and connected," according to the company documents viewed by The Times. They are also intended to spark emotions like "curiosity, closeness," as well as a sense of feeling "welcomed" while experimenting with headsets in a "judgment free journey," according to the documents.

Thelasko shares a report from Business Insider: Facebook announced last week that it's changing its name to Meta. But the transition might not be without obstacles. A company is already after the "Meta" trademark -- and was well before Facebook rolled out its new moniker. Arizona-based startup Meta PC founder Zach Shutt told Insider the company filed for the "Meta" trademark in August. The Patent and Trademark Office website confirms the filing, which states that Meta PC first began using the brand for its range of products in November 2020. [Founders Zach Shutt and Joe Darger] said they're willing to stand down if CEO Mark Zuckerberg pays them $20 million, TMZ reported. However, Shutt declined to confirm the amount, or that it made such a proposal.

CME Group announced a 10-year-partnership with Google Cloud this morning, with Google saying it would also invest $1 billion in the exchange giant -- currently the world's most valuable. Fortune reports: Prima facie, it's an odd deal: A search giant is investing in a financial services company that had its start well over a century ago. Despite the age difference, what is perhaps more surprising is that this kind of a deal -- investing in a customer -- within the cloud giants is not that rare. Microsoft for instance invested in the $2 billion funding round of autonomous car company, Cruise, becoming an investor and a vendor for the startup's cloud needs. [...] And now, with the CME deal, Google seems intent on honing in on the financial services industry, which has historically shied away from cloud migration over regulatory and privacy concerns. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian called the investment "a reflection of our commitment to the transformation of the financial system, not just to one company's infrastructure."