A startup named OceanWell has partnered with southern California's Las Virgenes Municipal Water District "to study the feasibility of harvesting drinking water from desalination pods placed on the ocean floor," reports the Los Angeles Times: The company says that by combining desalination with off-shore energy technology, it can solve many of the challenges associated with traditional, land-based desalination, including high energy costs and salty byproducts that threaten marine life. The process could produce as much as 10 million gallons of fresh water per day — a significant gain for an inland district almost entirely reliant on imported supplies...

OceanWell says its technology can use up to 40% less energy by harvesting the water in pods placed at depths of about 1,400 feet, where naturally immense water pressure can help power the filtration process... Land-based facilities try to squeeze out as much freshwater as possible to help balance high energy costs, with typical targets of 50% freshwater and 50% brine from every gallon processed. But because OceanWell uses "free" pressure from the ocean, it can operate at a lower recovery rate of 10% to 15%, producing a much less salty byproduct that can be dissolved back into ambient conditions within seconds, she said...

The partnership with Las Virgenes will allow OceanWell to "stress test" the technology's capabilities in the reservoir and collect more data, said Kalyn Simon, OceanWell's director of engagement. The current goal is to be fully operational by 2028, producing an estimated 10 million gallons of freshwater per day.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

"As more companies enforce their office mandates, some workers are choosing to quit instead of complying and returning to the office," reports the Washington Post. Workers say their reasons for quitting include everything from family to commuting expenses to being required to relocate. And many workers worry that people like those with disabilities or who are primary caregivers may be left behind due to their inability to successfully work from the office... Workers are pushing back, penning letters to executives, staging walkouts and quitting despite the tight labor market. "I'm not surprised at all," Prithwiraj Choudhury, a Harvard Business School professor who studies the future of work, said about workers quitting. "By mandating these rigid policies, you're risking your top performers and diversity. It just doesn't make economic sense."

Choudhury said companies should provide overall guidance that allows each to determine how they best work after analysis and feedback from workers. That's especially important for women, whom Choudhury said are resigning in large numbers — a notion multiple surveys support... For some workers who moved or were hired remotely during the pandemic, commuting is a nearly impossible task, they say.
In a related note, Grindr tells the Post they're still requiring two-days-per-week in the office starting in October. Grindr they're looking forward to "further improving productivity and collaboration."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group claimed responsibility for the MGM Resorts cyber outage on Tuesday, according to a post by malware archive vx-underground. The group claims to have used common social engineering tactics, or gaining trust from employees to get inside information, to try and get a ransom out of MGM Resorts, but the company reportedly refuses to pay. The conversation that granted initial access took just 10 minutes, according to the group.

"All ALPHV ransomware group did to compromise MGM Resorts was hop on LinkedIn, find an employee, then call the Help Desk," the organization wrote in a post on X. Those details came from ALPHV, but have not been independently confirmed by security researchers. The international resort chain started experiencing outages earlier this week, as customers noticed slot machines at casinos owned by MGM Resorts shut down on the Las Vegas strip. As of Wednesday morning, MGM Resorts still shows signs that it's experiencing downtime, like continued website disruptions. In a statement on Tuesday, MGM Resorts said: "Our resorts, including dining, entertainment and gaming are currently operational." However, the company said Wednesday that the cyber incident has significantly disrupted properties across the United States and represents a material risk to the company.

"[T]he major credit rating agency Moody's warned that the cyberattack could negatively affect MGM's credit rating, saying the attack highlighted 'key risks' within the company," reports CNBC. "The company's corporate email, restaurant reservation and hotel booking systems remain offline as a result of the attack, as do digital room keys. MGM on Wednesday filed a 8-K report with the Securities and Exchange Commission noting that on Tuesday the company issued a press release 'regarding a cybersecurity issue involving the Company.'" MGM's share price has declined more than 6% since Monday.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Bloomberg: China-linked hackers breached the corporate account of a Microsoft engineer and are suspected of using that access to steal a valuable key that enabled the hack of senior U.S. officials' email accounts, the company said in a blog post. The hackers used the key to forge authentication tokens to access email accounts on Microsoft's cloud servers, including those belonging to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Representative Don Bacon and State Department officials earlier this year.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Microsoft disclosed the breach in June, but it was still unclear at the time exactly how hackers were able to steal the key that allowed them to access the email accounts. Microsoft said the key had been improperly stored within a "crash dump," which is data stored after a computer or application unexpectedly crashes...

The incident has brought fresh scrutiny to Microsoft's cybersecurity practices.
Microsoft's blog post says they corrected two conditions which allowed this to occur. First, "a race condition allowed the key to be present in the crash dump," and second, "the key material's presence in the crash dump was not detected by our systems." We found that this crash dump, believed at the time not to contain key material, was subsequently moved from the isolated production network into our debugging environment on the internet connected corporate network. This is consistent with our standard debugging processes. Our credential scanning methods did not detect its presence (this issue has been corrected).

After April 2021, when the key was leaked to the corporate environment in the crash dump, the Storm-0558 actor was able to successfully compromise a Microsoft engineer's corporate account. This account had access to the debugging environment containing the crash dump which incorrectly contained the key. Due to log retention policies, we don't have logs with specific evidence of this exfiltration by this actor, but this was the most probable mechanism by which the actor acquired the key.

Agence France-Presse reports that "Two years ago, El Salvador shrugged off a chorus of warnings and adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in a bid to revitalize its economy and improve access to financial services.

"It has not worked... Economist Cesar Villalona told AFP that Bitcoin 'does not exist in the local economy' in any significant way, because in El Salvador 'everything' is paid in dollars: wages, services and goods." Bitcoin has lost more than half its value since then and though President Nayib Bukele is wildly popular for his clampdown on criminal gangs, his currency gamble has not gone down equally well... [T]wo years after El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as its currency, alongside the U.S. dollar, "the goals that were pursued... have not been achieved, people hardly use it, they don't have much trust" in crypto, economist and former Reserve Bank governor Carlos Acevedo told AFP. "The experiment has not worked, it is a crypto winter," he said.

There are no figures available on how many Salvadorans have taken up Bitcoin. But a poll conducted in May by the Central American University found that 71 percent believed the cryptocurrency "has in no way helped to improve their family economic situation."

On the streets of San Salvador, the verdict is harsh. "I don't see that money working, it's just propaganda. Where's the benefit? There's no benefit. It's a bad investment," newspaper vendor Juan Antonio Salgado, 65, told AFP. "It's robbery," he added, in reference to the currency's volatility.
Even a video report from Al Jazeera opens by asking "So has the experiment succeeded? The general verdict — not yet, at least."

They report that even though one fifth of El Salvador's GDP comes from remittances, less than 2% of its remittances went through crypto currency and digital wallets so far this year. Building has yet to begin on "Bitcoin City" — and the country has yet to actually issue the "Volcano Bonds" that would fund its creation.

And meanwhile, the government's bitcoin purchases have now lost an estimated $45.4 million.

"Viasat Inc. has more than $1 billion of orbiting satellites in trouble," reports Bloomberg, "and space insurers are girding for market-rattling claims." The company's roughly $1 billion ViaSat-3 Americas satellite, central to expanding its fixed-broadband coverage and fending off rivals including Elon Musk's Starlink, suffered an unexpected problem as it deployed its antenna in orbit in April. Should Viasat declare it a total loss, industry executives estimate the claim would reach a record-breaking $420 million and, in turn, make it harder — and more expensive — for other satellite operators to get insurance... Viasat on Aug. 24 reported another stricken spacecraft, saying its Inmarsat-6 F2 satellite launched in February suffered a power problem. The failure may end the craft's useful life and result in a $350 million insurance claim, Space Intel Report said.

Viasat's troubles in orbit come a few years after big-name insurers like American International Group Inc. and Allianz SE have shuttered their space portfolios. That's left a smaller pool of providers to absorb the risks in the notoriously high-stakes $553 million market...

Following news of the Inmarsat-6 anomaly, Viasat and other industry participants "will likely experience significant challenges with obtaining insurance for future satellite launches," [investment banking firm] William Blair's Louie DiPalma said in an Aug. 25 note... In 2019, the total losses from satellite claims amounted to $788 million, which overwhelmed the total premiums for the year at $500 million, according to launch and satellite database Seradata. In the years that followed, big names like American International Group Inc., Swiss Re AG, and Allianz SE all closed the door on satellite insurance.
Earlier this month Viasat's CEO says before deciding whether they'll file a claim, "There's no consequences to us taking another couple or three months to get good measurements and then making those decisions."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft employees were already expecting lackluster pay rises. In a company-wide email sent earlier this year, the tech company's CEO Satya Nadella warned staff of salary freezes and cuts to the bonusbudget. But despite previous transparency around the cost-cutting measures, employees enquiring about how the budget cuts have impacted their performance review will now be fobbed off. According to leaked guidance, managers are being ordered to dodge such questions in the name of company culture. "It's natural for employees to ask questions about budget given the decisions shared in Satya's email," the guidance reportedly states. "However, it's most important to focus discussions with direct reports on their impact for the past fiscal year and directly tie it to their rewards."

Managers should not use the budget cuts as an "explanation" for compensation decisions for individual employees and instead should emphasize that the employee's own "impact" determines "rewards." "Using budgets or factors besides the employee's impact as an explanation for an employee's rewards will erode trust and confidence within your team," the guide cautions. "Reinforce that every year offers unique opportunity for impact, and we increase our high expectations, regardless of our budget."

The New York Times explores harrowing stories about recent airplane near-miss "close calls" on U.S. runways: The incidents — highlighted in preliminary F.A.A. safety reports but not publicly disclosed — were among a flurry of at least 46 close calls involving commercial airlines last month alone... While there have been no major U.S. plane crashes in more than a decade, potentially dangerous incidents are occurring far more frequently than almost anyone realizes — a sign of what many insiders describe as a safety net under mounting stress. So far this year, close calls involving commercial airlines have been happening, on average, multiple times a week, according to a Times analysis of internal F.A.A. records, as well as thousands of pages of federal safety reports and interviews with more than 50 current and former pilots, air traffic controllers and federal officials.

The incidents often occur at or near airports and are the result of human error, the agency's internal records show... The close calls have involved all major U.S. airlines and have happened nationwide... In addition to the F.A.A. records, The Times analyzed a database maintained by NASA that contains confidential safety reports filed by pilots, air traffic controllers and others in aviation. The analysis identified a similar phenomenon: In the most recent 12-month period for which data was available, there were about 300 accounts of near collisions involving commercial airlines... One problem is that despite repeated recommendations from safety authorities, the vast majority of U.S. airports have not installed warning systems to help prevent collisions on runways.

But the most acute challenge, The Times found, is that the nation's air traffic control facilities are chronically understaffed. While the lack of controllers is no secret — the Biden administration is seeking funding to hire and train more — the shortages are more severe and are leading to more dangerous situations than previously known. As of May, only three of the 313 air traffic facilities nationwide had enough controllers to meet targets set by the F.A.A. and the union representing controllers, The Times found. Many controllers are required to work six-day weeks and a schedule so fatiguing that multiple federal agencies have warned that it can impede controllers' abilities to do their jobs properly.

Remember when your email address came from your ISP?

Now the cost for small companies to offer email service "has gone up in server and administration costs," reports the Guardian, "without the economies of scale." But in Australia, this has created a problem for people like the Canberra-based customer of iiNet who's had the same email address since the 1990s... TPG — which owns brands that have historically offered email including iiNet all the way back to OzEmail — informed customers in July that it would migrate their email to a separate private service, the Messaging Company, by the end of November. Users will keep their exisiting email addresses on this service, and would get it free for the first year. After that, there will be options of paying for a service, or an ad-based free service after that. The amount to be charged from next year has not yet been decided.

The announcement was met with outrage among users of the long-running web forum Whirlpool. "It's a shitty move. My wife has never set up a Gmail or Yahoo and only ever used her iiNet email address for her business as well as personal. This screws us royally," one user said.

"Us oldies couldn't start out using Gmail etc because they weren't in existence 25 years ago," another said.

"It's a nightmare trying to change logins at many places...."

The other factor is the increasing security risk. Legacy systems, particularly those managed under a variety of absorbed companies, as with TPG, can over time become more at risk of a cybersecurity attack or breach. External providers who offer this service either in place of, or on behalf of the internet service provider are becoming seen as the more secure option....

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network chief executive, Andrew Williams, says that ultimately internet providers getting out of the email game is a good thing because it means customers don't feel locked into one internet company...

With the rise in data breaches, and the avalanche of spam and scams, the shift offers people the opportunity of a clean email slate, according to Andrew Williams, of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.

Adyen's shares plunged as aggressive competition in North America contributed to the slowest revenue growth since its initial public offering, erasing more than $19.6 billion of market value in a single day. From a report: Shares of the Dutch payment processing company fell a record 40.6% to $950 at 4:49 p.m. in Amsterdam, the lowest since May 2020. Trading was temporarily halted due to volatility multiple times in the day. Pricing competition, higher inflation and interest rates stunted revenue growth in the first half, the Amsterdam-based fintech firm said on Thursday. Net sales rose 21% to $803 million in the period, compared to an estimate of $843 million in a Bloomberg survey of analysts. Adyen has been a reliable growth stock, with revenue rising by at least 26% in every half since its listing in 2018 until the latest period. The disappointing results, which were also hurt by inflation and rising interest rates, suggest maintaining such momentum will be a challenge.

In a neighborhood in Seoul there's an ordinary red-brick, four-story building, reports Bloomberg — but there's something unique about the building's basement office. It's somehow the registered address of the Centre "whose extraordinary claims about a breakthrough in superconductor technology have shocked the scientific community and captivated the world."

Bloomberg also reports that:

- "No one responded when a Bloomberg News reporter knocked on the center's locked doors or reached out via LinkedIn."

- "Goods including bottles of sparkling water delivered to the center's address have been left untouched outside the office's entrance."

- "Multiple attempts to reach the scientists at the Quantum Energy Research Centre were not answered."

- "The center's website has also been closed and says it is 'under construction.'"

However, Kim Hyun Tak, one of the authors of the papers who is a research professor of physics at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, said the skeptical reaction is expected. "It's common practice when a new crucial discovery or invention is made public that there are more people who say that it's not credible," Kim said in a Zoom interview. "It's a natural thing for some people to laugh at it because it's the first time, and they don't even know what it is, but as time passes, they start to believe it...."

In response to questions about why the Quantum Energy Research Centre hasn't provided the materials to other scientists, Kim said that it doesn't have enough inventory of the LK-99 compound nor time to recreate it, and that the researchers have been distracted by the number of journalists trying to contact them. "You know that the office is extremely small and in a poor state." he said. "It's so small, and you need the money to make the compounds. That's why they cannot mass-produce it."

Despite the questions, he remained defiant that the research was sound. "The experimental data speaks for itself," Kim said. "We know it because we're the ones who synthesized it and conducted the studies."
"The claim has been met with widespread excitement globally," adds Bloomberg, "sending related stocks soaring in South Korea and China, but also skepticism as past claims had been later proven wrong."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: China's cyberspace regulator said on Wednesday children under the age of 18 should be limited to a maximum of two hours a day on their smartphones, sending shares in tech companies tumbling. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said it wanted providers of smart devices to introduce so-called minor mode programs that would bar users under 18 from accessing the internet on mobile devices from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Providers would also have to set time limits under the proposed reforms, the CAC said. Users aged 16 to 18 would be allowed two hours a day, children aged eight to 16 would get one hour while children under eight would be allowed just eight minutes. But the CAC said service providers should allow parents to opt out of the time limits for their youngsters. Xia Hailong, a lawyer at the Shanghai Shenlun law firm, said it'll take "a lot of effort and additional costs" for internet companies to implement these new regulatory requirements. "And the risk of non-compliance will also be very high. So I believe that many internet companies may consider directly prohibiting minors from using their services."

Norway's data protection regulator has accused Meta of violating user privacy by tracking their activities, threatening to fine the company $100,000 per day if it fails to take corrective action. "It is so clear that this is illegal that we need to intervene now and immediately," said Tobias Judin, head of Norway's privacy commission, Datatilsynet. Engadget reports: The move follows a European court ruling banning Meta from harvesting user data like location, behavior and more for advertising. Datatilsynet has referred its actions to Europe's Data Protection Board, which could widen the fine across Europe. The aim is to put "additional pressure" on Meta, Judin said. (Norway is a member of the European single market, but not technically an EU member.)

Meta told Reuters that it's reviewing Datatilsynet's decision and that the decision wouldn't immediately impact its services. "We continue to constructively engage with the Irish DPC, our lead regulator in the EU, regarding our compliance with its decision," a spokesperson said. "The debate around legal bases has been ongoing for some time and businesses continue to face a lack of regulatory certainty in this area."

The Washington Post begins a recent article with the story of an 18-year-old drug dealer with mental health issues named Zachary Burkard, who shot two unarmed 17-year-olds with a "ghost gun" he built from a kit bought online.

The father of one of those 17-year-olds thinks "They've just made it entirely too easy to get these guns... A child can buy one. There's no background checks. You don't even need a bank account. You can go to 7-Eleven and get a debit card, put money on it and buy a gun." The families of the two teens, with the help of the anti-gun-violence group Everytown for Gun Safety, are now suing the distributor of the parts Burkard used to make his ghost gun, 80P Builder of Florida, and the manufacturer, Polymer80 of Nevada, for gross negligence in providing a teenager with a weapon when he was not legally able to buy a handgun from a federally licensed dealer. The case, those who track the weapons say, demonstrates a frightening phenomenon... Teenagers have discovered the ease with which they can acquire the parts for a ghost gun, and they have been buying, building and shooting the homemade guns with alarming frequency. Everytown for Gun Safety compiled a list of more than 50 incidents involving teens and ghost guns since 2019. Among them:

- In Brooklyn Park, Minn., police arrested two teens with ghost guns in December after authorities said one of them attempted to shoot someone outside their car but instead killed their friend inside it.
- In New Rochelle, N.Y., a 16-year-old created a "ghost gun factory" in his bedroom last year, police said, before killing another 16-year-old...

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) estimated that Polymer80 was responsible for more than 88 percent of the ghost guns recovered by police between 2017 and 2021, though there are nearly 100 manufacturers selling parts, or full kits, which can be made into unserialized guns, a list compiled by Everytown shows. Teens are hardly the only users. Last year, police departments seized at least 25,785 ghost guns nationwide, the Justice Department said recently, and those are just the weapons submitted by police to ATF for tracing, even though they don't have serial numbers and largely cannot be traced. In 2021, the number of guns recovered was 19,344, meaning seizures rose 33 percent the following year.

ATF has linked ghost guns to 692 homicides and nonfatal shootings through 2021, including mass killings and school shootings...

[This May] in Baltimore, authorities arrested three 14-year-olds after armed robberies and an armed carjacking. Police said one of them had a ghost gun. And in Valdosta, Ga., authorities said, a 16-year-old bought a ghost gun kit online in 2021 and assembled her own Glock-style pistol. One day while some friends were at her house, the teen accidentally shot a 14-year-old in the head, leaving him partially paralyzed, with severe brain damage and permanent physical and cognitive issues, his family's lawyer Melvin Hewitt said.
While some states have passed regulations, last year America's national firearm-regulating agency also declared parts of ghost guns to be firearms, according to the article, in an attempt to close a commonly-cited loophole. The parts makers challenged the new rule in court, lost twice, then won in a conservative federal court in Texas. The U.S. Justice Department may now appeal that decision to the higher Fifth Circuit court, and if it loses there "could appeal to the Supreme Court." Dudley Brown, the president of the National Association for Gun Rights, said he is against all regulation of privately made firearms, calling the practice of building weapons a "long and storied tradition in America."

Long-time Slashdot reader Ammalgam shares a report from CRM Rank: Salesforce, the leading provider of software for customer relations management, announced that it will implement a price increase for some of its cloud and marketing tools starting in August. The company's decision to raise prices, the first in seven years, was met with a positive market response as its shares surged nearly 4% during early trading on Tuesday.

This move by Salesforce aligns with the current trend among technology companies, including Salesforce itself, to invest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) and incorporate it into their products and services. To enhance its software capabilities, Salesforce has dedicated over $20 billion to research and development efforts over the past seven years. These investments have led to the introduction of new features, particularly generative AI tools, aimed at providing enhanced value to customers. The revised prices will apply to a range of Salesforce products, including Tableau, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Industries. Both new and existing customers will be subject to price adjustments, ensuring consistency across the customer base. Salesforce detailed the new price increases in a statement, saying: "New list pricing will go into effect globally for new customers and existing customers purchasing new clouds in August 2023. The new list prices will be Professional Edition $80 (up $5), Enterprise Edition $165 (up $15) and Unlimited Edition $330 (up $30). These editions will be priced comparably in other currencies. Similar list price increases will go into effect for Industries, Marketing Cloud Engagement and Account Engagement, CRM Analytics and Tableau."

As an "ambassador" for FTX, football quarterback Tom Brady appeared at the company's conference in the Bahamas, and in TV commercials promoting the exchange as "the most trusted" institution in crypto, remembers the New York Times. And it was all about to go very bad...

"His money was also at stake. As part of an endorsement agreement Brady signed in 2021, FTX had paid him $30 million, a deal that consisted almost entirely of FTX stock, three people with knowledge of the contract said. Brady's wife at the time, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, was paid $18 million in FTX stock, one of the people said." Now FTX is bankrupt, and Bankman-Fried is facing criminal fraud charges. Brady, 45, and Bündchen, 42, have been sued by a group of FTX customers seeking compensation from the celebrities who endorsed the exchange. On top of it all, the terms of the deal would have required the former couple, who divorced last year, to pay taxes on at least some of their now worthless FTX stock, two people familiar with the endorsement deal said. Their situation is the highest-profile example of a humiliating reckoning facing the actors, athletes, and other celebrities who rushed to embrace the easy money and online hype of cryptocurrencies...

But last year's crash ended the celebrity crypto bonanza. In October, the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered Kim Kardashian to pay $1.26 million for failing to make adequate disclosures when she endorsed the EthereumMax crypto token. In December, a lawyer in California sued two crypto companies, MoonPay and Yuga Labs, accusing them of using a "vast network of A-list musicians, athletes and celebrity clients" to mislead investors about digital assets. In March, the S.E.C. charged the actress Lindsay Lohan, the online influencer Jake Paul and musicians including Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty with illegally promoting crypto assets. And in late May, after months of failed attempts, a process server delivered court papers to Shaquille O'Neal, the retired basketball star, who was sued for promoting FTX, according to legal filings. Mr. O'Neal was served while broadcasting from a National Basketball Association playoff game...

Brady has also faced legal trouble. In December, Adam Moskowitz and the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner filed a lawsuit in federal court in Florida accusing him and Bündchen of misleading investors. Among the other defendants are comedian Larry David, NBA star Steph Curry and tennis player Naomi Osaka, all of whom endorsed FTX. "None of these defendants performed any due diligence prior to marketing these FTX products to the public," the lawsuit said.

Slashdot reader j3x0n shared this report from California newspaper the Sacramento Bee: In 2015, Democratic Elk Grove Assemblyman Jim Cooper voted for Senate Bill 34, which restricted law enforcement from sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with out-of-state authorities. In 2023, now-Sacramento County Sheriff Cooper appears to be doing just that. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) a digital rights group, has sent Cooper a letter requesting that the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office cease sharing ALPR data with out-of-state agencies that could use it to prosecute someone for seeking an abortion.

According to documents that the Sheriff's Office provided EFF through a public records request, it has shared license plate reader data with law enforcement agencies in states that have passed laws banning abortion, including Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas. Adam Schwartz, EFF senior staff attorney, called automated license plate readers "a growing threat to everyone's privacy ... that are out there by the thousands in California..." Schwartz said that a sheriff in Texas, Idaho or any other state with an abortion ban on the books could use that data to track people's movements around California, knowing where they live, where they work and where they seek reproductive medical care, including abortions.

The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office isn't the only one sharing that data; in May, EFF released a report showing that 71 law enforcement agencies in 22 California counties — including Sacramento County — were sharing such data... [Schwartz] said that he was not aware of any cases where ALPR data was used to prosecute someone for getting an abortion, but added, "We think we shouldn't have to wait until the inevitable happens."
In May the EFF noted that the state of Idaho "has enacted a law that makes helping a pregnant minor get an abortion in another state punishable by two to five years in prison."

Jony Ive has been busy since leaving Apple, with his design agency working on things like a typeface, a charity clown nose and "the future of Airbnb." LoveFrom's latest project takes Ive back to his hardware days -- it's a new model of a modular turntable that's been around for half a century. From a report: LoveFrom helped refine Linn's Sondek LP12 for a 50th anniversary edition. Ive told Fast Company it was a "very gentle and modest project" for LoveFrom that stems from his team's admiration for Linn. Perhaps as a result of that, LoveFrom carried out the work pro bono. "There are many things that I've always wanted to be able to do purely for the love of doing them," Ive noted.

The design firm approached Linn about working together, in part because Ive is a long-time fan of the brand. The two teams examined every aspect of the LP12 but couldn't change the turntable very much owing to concerns over impact to the sound quality. Still, LoveFrom "saw a number of areas where there could be small improvements and gentle evolutions of the current design," Ive said. [...] If you're interested in owning the first post-Apple hardware that Ive worked on, you'll have to dig deep into your pockets. The Sondek LP12-50 costs $60,000 and Linn is only making 250 of them.

The New York Times tells the story of Simon Mackenzie, a security officer at a U.K. discount store uploading security camera footage of shoplifters into a facial recognition program called Facewatch. "The next time those people enter any shop within a few miles that uses Facewatch, store staff will receive an alert."

Facewatch — now in nearly 400 stores across Britain — licenses facial recognition software made by Real Networks and Amazon. Though it only sends alert about repeat offenders, "Once added, a person remains there for a year before being deleted." For as little as 250 pounds a month, or roughly $320, Facewatch offers access to a customized watchlist that stores near one another share. When Facewatch spots a flagged face, an alert is sent to a smartphone at the shop, where employees decide whether to keep a close eye on the person or ask the person to leave. Mr. Mackenzie adds one or two new faces every week, he said, mainly people who steal diapers, groceries, pet supplies and other low-cost goods. He said their economic hardship made him sympathetic, but that the number of thefts had gotten so out of hand that facial recognition was needed. Usually at least once a day, Facewatch alerts him that somebody on the watchlist has entered the store...

Among democratic nations, Britain is at the forefront of using live facial recognition, with courts and regulators signing off on its use. The police in London and Cardiff are experimenting with the technology to identify wanted criminals as they walk down the street. In May, it was used to scan the crowds at the coronation of King Charles III. But the use by retailers has drawn criticism as a disproportionate solution for minor crimes. Individuals have little way of knowing they are on the watchlist or how to appeal. In a legal complaint last year, Big Brother Watch, a civil society group, called it "Orwellian in the extreme...." Madeleine Stone, the legal and policy officer for Big Brother Watch, said Facewatch was "normalizing airport-style security checks for everyday activities like buying a pint of milk."
There is a human in the loop, the article points out. "Every time Facewatch's system identifies a shoplifter, a notification goes to a person who passed a test to be a 'super recognizer' — someone with a special talent for remembering faces. Within seconds, the super recognizer must confirm the match against the Facewatch database before an alert is sent."

The company's founder tells the Times that in general, "mistakes are rare but do happen... If this occurs, we acknowledge our mistake, apologize, delete any relevant data to prevent reoccurrence and offer proportionate compensation."

And the article adds this official response from the U.K. government: Fraser Sampson, Britain's biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner, who advises the government on policy, said there was "a nervousness and a hesitancy" around facial recognition technology because of privacy concerns and poorly performing algorithms in the past. "But I think in terms of speed, scale, accuracy and cost, facial recognition technology can in some areas, you know, literally be a game changer," he said. "That means its arrival and deployment is probably inevitable. It's just a case of when."

"People do not like eating insects. Livestock are less picky," writes the Economist. Of course, the insects need to eat, too. To date, they have mostly been reared on leftover chicken feed. But the supply of that is limited, and if insect-reared meat is to take off, new sources will be needed. In a paper in Applied Entomology, Niels Eriksen, a biochemist at Aalborg University, suggests feeding them on the waste products of the beer industry. The world knocks back around 185bn litres of beer every year. Each litre produces between three and ten litres of wastewater full of discarded barley and yeast . The mix is rich in protein but deficient in carbohydrates, especially compared with chicken feed.
The Economist reports that the researchers found brewery waste was "happily consumed" by insects they tested, which "grew equally well on either food source." This suggests the possibility that other plentiful and protein-rich food wastes could also become "reasonable targets for nutrient recycling by insects," including waste from other fermentation industries (like bioethanol), slaughterhouses, and sugar-beet waste.

Thanks to Slashdot reader echo123 for sharing the article.