An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission has finished investigating T-Mobile for a network outage that Chairman Ajit Pai called "unacceptable." But instead of punishing the mobile carrier, the FCC is merely issuing a public notice to "remind" phone companies of "industry-accepted best practices" that could have prevented the T-Mobile outage. After the 12-hour nationwide outage on June 15 disrupted texting and calling services, including 911 emergency calls, Pai wrote that "The T-Mobile network outage is unacceptable" and that "the FCC is launching an investigation. We're demanding answers -- and so are American consumers."

Pai has a history of talking tough with carriers and not following up with punishments that might have a greater deterrence effect than sternly worded warnings. That appears to be what happened again yesterday when the FCC announced the findings from its investigation into T-Mobile. Pai said that "T-Mobile's outage was a failure" because the carrier didn't follow best practices that could have prevented or minimized it, but he announced no punishment. The matter appears to be closed based on yesterday's announcement, but we contacted Chairman Pai's office today to ask if any punishment of T-Mobile is forthcoming.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For months, Bui Van Thuan, a chemistry teacher turned crusading blogger in Vietnam, published one scathing Facebook post after another on a land dispute between villagers and the communist government. In a country with no independent media, Facebook provides the only platform where Vietnamese can read about contentious topics such as Dong Tam, a village outside Hanoi where residents were fighting authorities' plans to seize farmland to build a factory. Believing a confrontation was inevitable, the 40-year-old Thuan condemned the country's leaders in a Jan. 7 post. "Your crimes will be engraved on my mind," he wrote. "I know you -- the land robbers -- will do everything, however cruel it is, to grab the people's land." Facebook blocked his account the next day at the government's insistence, preventing 60 million Vietnamese users from seeing his posts. One day later, as Thuan had warned, police stormed Dong Tam with tear gas and grenades. A village leader and three officers were killed.

For three months, Thuan's Facebook account remained suspended. Then the company told him the ban would be permanent. "We have confirmed that you are not eligible to use Facebook," the message read in Vietnamese. Thuan's blacklisting, which the Menlo Park-based social media giant now calls a "mistake," illustrates how willingly the company has acquiesced to censorship demands from an authoritarian government. Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, say the platform protects free expression except in narrow circumstances, such as when it incites violence. But in countries including Cuba, India, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, Facebook routinely restricts posts that governments deem sensitive or off-limits. Nowhere is that truer than in Vietnam. Facebook, whose site was translated into Vietnamese in 2008, now counts more than half the country's people among its account holders. The popular platform has enabled government critics and pro-democracy activists -- in both Vietnam and the United States -- to bypass the communist system's strict controls on the media. But in the last several years, the company has repeatedly censored dissent in Vietnam, trying to placate a repressive government that has threatened to shut Facebook down if it does not comply, The Times found.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has boasted a lot about the AR capabilities of its new LiDAR equipped iPhone 12 Pro. It means that your new iPhone will be able to 'map' the room better to place objects. However, I hadn't found an AR app that I might use regularly -- until now. A few months ago, developer Cyril Diagne showed off a demo of an app called ClipDrop that lets you 'drop' real-life objects to your desktop. Now, the app has entered beta, and I already love it. The concept of the app is cool. You can take a picture of any object and the app with automatically remove the background and convert it into an image. You can then paste the image on your desktop and use it in your applications. In addition to objects and people, you can also extract text from a book or page that you have.

General Motors said it has sold out the first year's worth of its hulking GMC Hummer EV electric pickup truck after a splashy video reveal on Tuesday. Reuters reports: The GMC website showed a "reservations full" banner over the Hummer EV "Edition 1," due to start production in the fall of 2021. The next version of the truck, the $99,995 Hummer EV 3X, is not scheduled to begin production until the fall of 2022. The least expensive Hummer EV, starting at $79,995, is scheduled to go into production in the spring of 2024, GM said.

The Hummer EV was designed and engineered in 18 months, GM officials said during a presentation on Wednesday. The brawny truck can "crab walk" sideways on rough terrain using its four-wheel steering system, and has a "Watts to Freedom" mode that accelerates the truck to 60 miles per hour (97 kph) in 3 seconds. The Hummer EV is in part a response to Tesla's Cybertruck, which has a very different but equally eye-grabbing design and a bevy of extreme performance features. [...] Startups Rivian, Nikola Corp and Lordstown Motors are among other companies that have electric pickups in development. Further reading: GMC Hummer EV vs. Tesla Cybertruck, Bollinger and Rivian

Software engineer Rashiq Zahid debuted a web app today that uses a reverse-engineered version of McDonald's ordering API to query every single McDonald's in the United States. "Assuming a store has correctly indicated that ice cream is unavailable and that its ice cream machine isn't working, it'll show up as a little red dot on the McBroken map," reports Lifehacker. From the report: Zahid even built in a statistics box into McBroken so you can see how various cities compare for ice cream uptime. According to Zahid, his system works by queueing up nearly $20,000 worth of orders each minute. Don't worry; he's not placing them and cancelling them over and over, so no McDonald's worker has yet to dunk their head in the fryer as a result of Zahid's shenanigans.

A number of different users on Twitter and Product Hunt have tested out Zahid's app by heading over to their local McDonald's restaurants and seeing what they can order. For the most part, the app checks out. Of course, there will still be occasional instances where a "working" ice cream machine actually isn't. Or, if you're lucky, you might find that an offline ice cream machine has since been reincarnated and that McDonald's simply forgot to note the change on their end. As for how long this little tool will exist before McDonald's gets wind of it and breaks its functionality, well, I'd place my ice cream order sooner than later.

Uber drivers say the company unlawfully pressured them to support a ballot initiative that would make gig workers independent contractors, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court by a proposed class of California drivers. Bloomberg Law reports: The suit alleges Uber used a coercive campaign of misinformation to exert pressure on drivers to advocate and vote for the passage of Proposition 22, which would overturn a California law that makes it difficult for the gig companies to be classified as contractors. If the workers were classified as employees, they would be entitled to overtime, minimum wage and other benefits. According to the complaint Uber, Lyft and other gig economy giants invested nearly $200 million into the campaign "Yes on 22."

The drivers in the lawsuit say they were faced with a "barrage of misinformation" about the ballot initiative through pop-ups on the Uber app, which made misleading representations about driver benefits under Proposition 22 including regarding accident insurance, earnings guarantees, scheduling, and anti-discrimination protections. One such pop-up only provides the opportunity for drivers to select "Yes on Prop. 22" or "OK," to exit, which pressures drivers to accept Uber's political stance, the complaint alleges. The proposed class action claims the company is attempting to direct the political activities of its California drivers with respect to Proposition 22, and threatening their discharge to coerce them to follow a particular political course of action, in direct violation of state law.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: New circuits can get printed directly on human skin to help monitor vital signs, a new study finds. In the new study, researchers developed a way to sinter nanoparticles of silver at room temperature. The key behind this advance is a so-called a sintering aid layer, consisting of a biodegradable polymer paste and additives such as titanium dioxide or calcium carbonate. Positive electrical charges in the sintering aid layer neutralized the negative electrical charges the silver nanoparticles could accumulate from other compounds in their ink. This meant it took less energy for the silver nanoparticles printed on top of the sintering aid layer to come together, says study senior author Huanyu Cheng, a mechanical engineer at Pennsylvania State University.

The sintering aid layer also created a smooth base for circuits printed on top of it. This in turn improved the performance of these circuits in the face of bending, folding, twisting and wrinkling. In experiments, the scientists placed the silver nanoparticle circuit designs and the sintering aid layer onto a wooden stamp, which they pressed onto the back of a human hand. They next used a hair dryer set to cool to evaporate the solvent in the ink. A hot shower could easily remove these circuits without damaging the underlying skin. After the circuits sintered, they could help the researchers measure body temperature, skin moisture, blood oxygen, heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure and bodily electrical signals such as electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) readings. The data from these sensors were comparable to or better than those measured using conventional commercial sensors that were simply stuck onto the skin, Cheng says. The findings have been published in the journal Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Rei writes: "Oh, it's going dude!" "But there's no lanes -- there's cars on the side of the road!" "DUDE, it's navigating through it ALL, bro!" ... "It paused to look DUDE!" "There's NO LANES! Elon, you madman!"

Such was one of the many reaction videos to come out overnight as Tesla released a major upgrade of Autopilot to a limited public beta. Complete with a new LIDAR-like visualization system, the car now provides a detailed display of how it perceives the world as it dodges parked cars, takes unprotected left turns with cross traffic and pedestrians, etc. No issues have been reported thus far, although one driver aborted after a roundabout due to a panicked passenger who didn't like how it exited into a lane with parked cars ahead (though the screen showed that it planned to change lanes to go around them).

The new version is the result of a long-running "4D" rewrite at Tesla, to overcome local maxima in earlier versions. Instead of processing each camera individually as a static series of frames, the neural net now processes a unified stitch of inputs over time, allowing context to persist between cameras and between frames. This in particular enhances parallax processing of depth input, both in terms of parallax between camera viewpoints and parallax between vehicle positions. If the public beta goes well, Elon is hopeful that Tesla will be able to roll out the new version broadly by the end of the year.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As stated earlier, new Ubuntu versions come April and October, and wouldn't you know it, we are at the end of the latter. With Halloween a bit more than a week away, Canonical today releases Ubuntu 20.10. Ubuntu's version numbering scheme is based on year (YY), a period, and the month (MM). For instance, the previous stable version was released this past April and it is numbered as 20.04. In addition, Canonical (the operating system's owner) assigns names -- sequentially and alphabetically. The alphanumeric code name is always based on two words starting with the same sequential letter -- an adjective followed by an animal name. The aforementioned 20.04 is named "Focal Fossa." This time, the operating system will be called Ubuntu 20.10 "Groovy Gorilla." This new version of the desktop operating system is loaded with fixes, new features, and a renewed focus on the now-iconic Raspberry Pi. Yes, folks, with a compatible Pi (models with 4GB or 8GB of RAM), you can now have the full Ubuntu desktop experience. More about the new features here.

The European Union has imposed sanctions today against Russia for its involvement in the 2015 German Parliament (Bundestag) hack. From a report: Sanctions were levied against the GRU (Russian Main Intelligence Directorate), a military intelligence agency part of the Russian Army, and two of its officers. The two GRU officers were identified as Dmitry Badin and Igor Kostyukov. EU officials said Badin was part of a team of Russian military intelligence officers who hacked the Bundestag IT network between April and May 2015. "This cyber-attack targeted the parliament's information system and affected its operation for several days," the EU said today. "A significant amount of data was stolen and the email accounts of several MPs as well as of Chancellor Angela Merkel were affected." Kostyukov was sanctioned for his role as First Deputy Head of the GRU. EU officials said Kostyukov commands the 85th Main Centre for Special Services (GTsSS), also known as Military Unit 26165, but more commonly known in the cyber-security industry under the hacker codenames of APT28, Fancy Bear, Sofacy, or Strontium.

Reader jkoebler writes: This is an in-depth, narrative investigation into Phantom Secure, a privacy-focused phone company that started selling locally to models and other VIPs, before eventually becoming a preferred network for serious, organized crime. One of Phantom's clients was the Sinaloa Cartel, according to a text message Phantom's owner Vincent Ramos sent to an associate included in court records.

The story follows how Phantom got set up, how it took over the world, and eventually how it got taken down by the FBI. It is the result of more than two years of reporting involving sources from the law enforcement, organized crime, and cybersecurity worlds. It features daring escapes from Las Vegas hotels, undercover agents, and a silver-plated AK-47 emblazoned with the Louis Vuitton logo.

According to a report from Wisconsin's Division of Executive Budget and Finance, Foxconn has not built the enormous Gen 10.5 LCD factory in Wisconsin that it specified in its contract with the state. "It also says that the building the company claims is a smaller Gen 6 LCD factory shows no signs of manufacturing LCDs in the foreseeable future and 'may be better suited for demonstration purposes,'" reports The Verge. From the report: The report notes that Foxconn received a permit to use its so-called "Fab" for storage, which The Verge first reported this week. Furthermore, according to an industry expert consulted by the state, Foxconn has not ordered the equipment that would be needed to make LCDs. If the building were to be used as an LCD manufacturing facility, the expert notes it would be the smallest Gen 6 in the world and "would appear to be more of a showcase than a business viable for the long term." If any LCD-related manufacturing were to take place in the building, the analysis says, it would likely only be the final assembly of components produced elsewhere and imported to Wisconsin. Such a project would have a vastly smaller impact on local supply chains and employ nowhere near the 13,000 workers anticipated in Foxconn's contract with the state.

Wisconsin Secretary of the Department of Administration Joel Brennan said in an interview with The Verge today that "clearly the Gen 6 that's been discussed and built in Mount Pleasant is not similar to other Gen 6 fabs around the world." Brennan said the memo was an effort to consult industry experts to better understand the scope of Foxconn's current project and its potential impact on the state. "There was justified criticism of the [former Governor Scott] Walker administration for entering into this contract, and not really getting any outside experts for an industry that was new to Wisconsin," Brennan said. "This is about making sure that we can use the best expertise that we have inside and outside state government so that we can make the best decisions possible." The report provides the fullest articulation of the state's reason for rejecting Foxconn's subsidy payments so far. Last week, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), which oversees the deal, denied the company its first installment of the nearly $3 billion refundable tax credits because it hasn't built the "Gen 10.5 Fab" specified in its contract.

The project Foxconn has pursued instead, the new analysis says, would not have warranted the record-breaking subsidy package passed by then-Gov. Scott Walker, nor required the infrastructure state and local governments have built to support it. "Taxpayers fully performed their side of the agreement to date, while the Recipients have not," the report says. In fact, "state taxpayers have spent as much if not more than" Foxconn has on improvements to the company's supposed manufacturing campus. The Verge previously reported that state and local governments spent at least $400 million on the project, mostly on land and infrastructure the company will likely never need. Foxconn listed approximately $300 million in capital expenses at the end of 2019.

Forklift operators are using remote-control technology that allows them to work off-site, controlling their machines from afar. The BBC reports: [A]s Covid-19 spreads easily, the warehouses dotted along the world's supply chains have become potential hubs of disease transmission, says Elliot Katz, co-founder of Phantom Auto. Phantom Auto's technology is now installed in around a dozen warehouses in the US and Europe, he adds. Some of the warehouses using Phantom Auto's technology fence-off the space where the remote-controlled forklifts work, says Mr Katz and the forklifts are also fitted with microphones so the operator can be warned should something be about to go wrong. "If someone is behind that forklift and says, 'Hey, you're about to hit me,' the operator can hear it just like he's sitting on the forklift," says Mr Katz.

Among the other firms working in the teleoperation space is US start-up Teleo. It specializes in retrofitting construction equipment so it can be driven remotely. It has just started a trial at a quarry for an unnamed client. In this case, Teleo has adapted a large-wheeled loading vehicle so it can be controlled from an office on site. In the future, a driver could sit in the office and remotely control a variety of vehicles nearby. That might mean fewer people would be employed on-site overall but Teleo argues it makes the role safer for the driver.

But the idea of vehicles driven like this is controversial for some. There's always the possibility a terrorist, for example, might try to hack such a system and use a teleoperated car or truck to kill people. Mr Katz and Mr Shet [Teleo co-founder and chief executive] both say their firms have thought about this scenario and add that their engineers have introduced various steps to make a cyber-attack harder. For example, by encrypting communications between teleoperator and vehicle, requiring authorization of drivers and automatically shutting down vehicles should they lose access to a reliable communications signal. No-one can guarantee that such a system will never be hacked, though.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: After years of backlash over controversial government work, Google technology will be used to aid the Trump administration's efforts to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border, according to documents related to a federal contract. In August, Customs and Border Protection accepted a proposal to use Google Cloud technology to facilitate the use of artificial intelligence deployed by the CBP Innovation Team, known as INVNT. Among other projects, INVNT is working on technologies for a new "virtual" wall along the southern border that combines surveillance towers and drones, blanketing an area with sensors to detect unauthorized entry into the country.

Contracting documents indicate that CBP's new work with Google is being done through a third-party federal contracting firm, Virginia-based Thundercat Technology. Thundercat is a reseller that bills itself as a premier information technology provider for federal contracts. The contract was obtained through a FOIA request filed by Tech Inquiry, a new research group that explores technology and corporate power founded by Jack Poulson, a former research scientist at Google who left the company over ethical concerns. Not only is Google becoming involved in implementing the Trump administration's border policy, the contract brings the company into the orbit of one of President Donald Trump's biggest boosters among tech executives.

Documents show that Google's technology for CBP will be used in conjunction with work done by Anduril Industries, a controversial defense technology startup founded by Palmer Luckey. The brash 28-year-old executive -- also the founder of Oculus VR, acquired by Facebook for over $2 billion in 2014 -- is an open supporter of and fundraiser for hard-line conservative politics; he has been one of the most vocal critics of Google's decision to drop its military contract. Anduril operates sentry towers along the U.S.-Mexico border that are used by CBP for surveillance and apprehension of people entering the country, streamlining the process of putting migrants in DHS custody. CBP's Autonomous Surveillance Towers program calls for automated surveillance operations "24 hours per day, 365 days per year" to help the agency "identify items of interest, such as people or vehicles." The program has been touted as a "true force multiplier for CBP, enabling Border Patrol agents to remain focused on their interdiction mission rather than operating surveillance systems." It's unclear how exactly CBP plans to use Google Cloud in conjunction with Anduril or for any of the "mission needs" alluded to in the contract document. Google faced internal turmoil in 2018 over a contract with the Pentagon to deploy AI-enhanced drone image recognition solutions. "In response to the controversy, Google ended its involvement with the initiative, known as Project Maven, and established a new set of AI principles to govern future government contracts," notes The Intercept.

Online vacation rental giant Airbnb on Wednesday said it has hired former Apple CDO Jony Ive and his company LoveFrom to assist in the design of future products and services. AppleInsider reports: Announced in a blog post from Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, Ive will work on next-generation "products and services" as a design consultant. It appears that he will report directly to Chesky, or collaborate on design initiatives with the CEO, throughout what is described as a "multi-year relationship." "Jony will also help us continue to develop our internal design team, which he believes to be one of the world's best," Chesky writes. "I know he is particularly excited about a relationship that will evolve to become a deep collaboration with our creative team."

As noted by The Information, Ive and Chesky have known each other for years. Ive helped flesh out Airbnb's logo in 2014, while Chesky wrote Ive's biography for Time magazine's top 100 most influential people in 2015. Airbnb on Wednesday told employees that its chief design officer, Alex Schleifer, would step down to a part-time role, The Information reports. Schleifer led the company's design team for six years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission's top lawyer today explained the FCC's theory of why it can grant President Donald Trump's request for a new interpretation of a law that provides legal protection to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Critics of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's plan from both the left and right say the FCC has no authority to reinterpret Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives legal immunity to online platforms that block or modify content posted by users. FCC General Counsel Thomas Johnson said those critics are wrong in a blog post published on the FCC website today.

Johnson noted that the Communications Decency Act was passed by Congress as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was an update to the Communications Act of 1934 that established the FCC and provided it with regulatory authority. Johnson also pointed to Section 201(b) of the Communications Act, which gave the FCC power to "prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest to carry out the provisions of this Act."

Johnson then explained why he believes this means the FCC can reinterpret Section 230: "The Supreme Court has twice considered whether the FCC's general rulemaking authority under Section 201(b), adopted in 1938, extends to the 1996 amendments to the Act. Both times, the Court held that it does. Writing for the Court in Iowa Utilities Board, and employing his trademark textualist method, Justice Scalia wrote that this provision 'means what it says: The FCC has rulemaking authority to carry out the 'provisions of [the 1934] Act.'' The Court explained that 'the clear fact that the 1996 Act was adopted, not as a freestanding enactment, but as an amendment to, and hence part of, [the 1934] Act' shows that Congress intended the Commission to have rulemaking authority over all its provisions. Likewise, in the later City of Arlington case, the Court confirmed that the Commission's rulemaking authority '[o]f course... extends to the subsequently added portions of the Act.' From these authorities, a simple conclusion follows: Because Section 230 is among the 'subsequently added portions of the Act,' it is subject to the FCC's Section 201(b) rulemaking authority." Matt Wood, VP of policy and general counsel at media-advocacy group Free Press, told Ars today: "The FCC lawyers' latest sleight-of-hand is a clever distraction, but still not good enough to save the Commission's pending foray into speech codes and Internet regulation. The agency claims that it's not going to make rules, it's merely going to interpret the supposed ambiguities in the language of Section 230 and let courts apply that interpretation. But there's no ambiguity to resolve, nor any reason for courts to follow the FCC's interpretation. And there's no hiding the fact that the FCC's pretense of interpretation without the effect of substantive rules is a ruse and nothing better."

Last night, GMC unveiled the Hummer EV, the company's first electric pickup with a 350-mile range, 1,000 HP and up to 11,500 pound-feet of torque. Although there's still plenty more questions than answers, CNET has compared what we know about the Hummer EV against the Tesla Cybertruck, as well as trucks from startups like Bollinger and Rivian. And just for fun, they've included the tried and true Ford F-150 (Raptor). Here's a summary of the specs/features based on CNET's analysis: Performance

Tesla Cybertruck: Three motors with more performance than the Model S Performance (though tech specs are limited).
GMC Hummer EV: 1,000 horsepower and 11,500 pound-feet of torque (likely axle torque). 60mph in 3 seconds flat.
The Bollinger B2: Dual-motor setup with 614 horsepower and 668 pound-feet of torque.
The Rivian R1T: The top-spec variant will feature 750 horsepower and 829 pound-feet of torque.
Ford F-150: High-output turbocharged V6 with 450 horsepower and 510 pound-feet of torque.

Range

Tesla Cybertruck: 500 miles
GMC Hummer EV: 350 miles; compatible with 350-kW DC fast-charging; 100 miles of range in just 10 minutes
Rivian R1T: 400 miles
Bollinger B2: 200 miles; 120 kWh battery
Ford F-150: 850 miles; 26-gallon tank of diesel

Towing and payload

Tesla Cybertruck: 14,000 pounds; NA
GMC Hummer EV: NA; NA
Rivian R1T: 11,000 pounds; NA
Bollinger B2: 7,500 pounds; 5,000 pounds
Ford F-150: 13,200 pounds; 3,270 pounds

Cost

Tesla Cybertruck: "under $40,000" for base model with rear-wheel drive
GMC Hummer EV: The fancy Edition 1 will cost $112,595 with less expensive versions in following years
Rivian R1T: starts at $69,000
Bollinger B2: starts at $125,000
Ford F-150: starts at $28,495 -> $67,485

Former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said the "excesses" of social media are likely to result in greater regulation of internet platforms in the coming years. From a report: Schmidt, who left the board of Google's parent Alphabet in 2019 but is still one of its largest shareholders, said the antitrust lawsuit the U.S. government filed against the company on Tuesday was misplaced, but that more regulation may be in order for social networks in general. "The context of social networks serving as amplifiers for idiots and crazy people is not what we intended," Schmidt said at a virtual conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. "Unless the industry gets its act together in a really clever way, there will be regulation."

[...] Schmidt also argued Google's massive search business -- the target of the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust suit -- continues to be so successful because people choose it over competitors, not because it uses its size to block smaller rivals. "I would be careful about these dominance arguments. I just don't agree with them," Schmidt said. "Google's market share is not 100%."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: In early September, the City Council in Portland, Ore., met virtually to consider sweeping legislation outlawing the use of facial recognition technology. The bills would not only bar the police from using it to unmask protesters and individuals captured in surveillance imagery; they would also prevent companies and a variety of other organizations from using the software to identify an unknown person. During the time for public comments, a local man, Christopher Howell, said he had concerns about a blanket ban. He gave a surprising reason. "I am involved with developing facial recognition to in fact use on Portland police officers, since they are not identifying themselves to the public," Mr. Howell said. Over the summer, with the city seized by demonstrations against police violence, leaders of the department had told uniformed officers that they could tape over their name. Mr. Howell wanted to know: Would his use of facial recognition technology become illegal?

Portland's mayor, Ted Wheeler, told Mr. Howell that his project was "a little creepy," but a lawyer for the city clarified that the bills would not apply to individuals. The Council then passed the legislation in a unanimous vote. Mr. Howell was offended by Mr. Wheeler's characterization of his project but relieved he could keep working on it. "There's a lot of excessive force here in Portland," he said in a phone interview. "Knowing who the officers are seems like a baseline." Mr. Howell, 42, is a lifelong protester and self-taught coder; in graduate school, he started working with neural net technology, an artificial intelligence that learns to make decisions from data it is fed, such as images. He said that the police had tear-gassed him during a midday protest in June, and that he had begun researching how to build a facial recognition product that could defeat officers' attempts to shield their identity. Mr. Howell is not alone in his pursuit. Law enforcement has used facial recognition to identify criminals, using photos from government databases or, through a company called Clearview AI, from the public internet. But now activists around the world are turning the process around and developing tools that can unmask law enforcement in cases of misconduct. The report also mentions a few other projects around the world that are using facial recognition tools against the police.

An online exhibit called "Capture," was created by artist Paolo Cirio and includes photos of 4,000 faces of French police officers. It's currently down because France's interior minister threatened legal action against Mr. Cirio but he hopes to republish them.

Andrew Maximov, a technologist from Belarus, uploaded a video to YouTube that demonstrated how facial recognition technology could be used to digitally strip away masks from police officers.

The report also notes that older attempts to identify police officers have relied on crowdsourcing. For example, news service ProPublica asks readers to identify officers in a series of videos of police violence. There's also the OpenOversight, a "public searchable database of law enforcement officers" that asks people to upload photos of uniformed officers and match them to the officers' names or badge numbers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The date was April 20, 1978; the scene, the Great Hall of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art on Astor Place. On the stage where Abraham Lincoln once spoke sat two men, the Italian modernist Massimo Vignelli and the cartographer John Tauranac, constituting two sides of the Great Subway Map Debate. Six years earlier, Vignelli's firm had reimagined the New York subway map into a groovy rainbowlike diagram, one that graphic designers loved and many riders found hard to navigate. Tauranac was the head of a committee that had engaged Michael Hertz Associates to re-re-draw it into the topographically grounded, graphically busy, and not particularly elegant map that -- modest updates aside -- is the one we all still use. Vignelli's diagram was a joy to look at and was nearly useless as an aboveground navigation tool. Hertz and Tauranac's map functioned pretty well as a map to getting around town but inspired comparatively little delight. Vignelli said the Hertz map made him "puke." Tauranac countered with paeans to real-world use. (The moderator for the evening was Peter Blake, New York's first architecture critic.) By the end of the Great Debate, the aesthetes sensed they were going to lose, and indeed they did. Hertz's practical problem-solving work replaced Vignelli's the following year, and the aesthetes have been rolling their eyes ever since. Jonathan Barnett, then a City College professor, summed up the evening by asking, "Why can't we have both maps?"

As of this morning, perhaps we do.

The MTA has unveiled its new digital map, the first one that uses the agency's own data streams to update in real time. It supersedes the blizzard of paper service-change announcements that are taped all over your subway station's entrance. It's so thoroughly up-to-the-moment that you can watch individual trains move around the system on your phone. Pinch your fingers on the screen, and you can zoom out to see your whole line or borough, as the lines resolve into single strands. Drag your fingers apart, and you'll zoom in to see multiple routes in each tunnel springing out, widening into parallel bands -- making visible individual service changes, closures and openings, and reroutings. Click on a station, and you can find out whether the elevators and escalators are working. The escalators at 34th Street-11th Avenue, as of press time, are 18 for 20. And the whole thing resolves the Great Subway Map Debate almost by accident along the way, because when you're zoomed-in it draws on the best parts of Vignelli's diagram -- the completeness of its parallel, stranded routes and the swoopy aesthetics -- and the zoomed-out version echoes the Hertz map's best features, its graspable consolidation of multiple lines into single ones and its representation of the physical world.