An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Over the last year, Amazon has dangled in front of cities the possibility that they could host the company's "second headquarters" -- a massive $5 billion facility that would provide 50,000 white-collar jobs. On Tuesday, Amazon confirmed what had been widely reported: nobody would be getting this massive prize. Instead, the expansion would be split in half, with New York City and Arlington, Virginia, (just outside Washington, DC) each getting smaller facilities that will employ around 25,000 people each. Amazon's Seattle offices will continue to be the company's largest and will continue to be Amazon's headquarters by any reasonable definition. But pretending to have three "headquarters" undoubtedly makes it easier for Amazon to coax taxpayer dollars out of local governments. [...] The tactic seems to have worked, as governments in both locations have offered Amazon hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to locate their new offices there. Virginia officials appear to have driven a harder bargain than their rivals in New York. Amazon says it's getting $1.5 billion in government incentives for its New York expansion, whereas Virginia is offering a comparatively modest $573 million in direct incentives.

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PM Theresa May calls special cabinet meeting on Wednesday when she will present the text to her ministers.

Activists want the US and Muslim countries to apply pressure on China to end its persecution of Turkic Muslim minority.

Google's official G Suite Twitter account is the latest victim of an ongoing bitcoin scam that has been plaguing the social media platform for the last few weeks. Earlier on Wednesday, Target saw a similar hack. From a report: G Suite might be the highest-profile target of the scam yet, which saw fake, promoted tweets that appeared to originate from the G Suite account pop up in users' timelines this afternoon, directing them toward a scammy bitcoin address as part of a "giveaway." From another report: The hackers have also hacked other high-profile accounts and made similar pledges, Twitter confirmed. In multiple cases, they have impersonated Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and made a similar bitcoin pledge. To do so, they installed Musk's Twitter photo on the verified Twitter accounts they hacked and changed the accounts' display name to his. Musk's genuine Twitter account has not been compromised. In this incident, the scammers direct unsuspecting Twitter users to click on a giveaway link and to send bitcoin payments to them. By sending a certain amount, users are dubiously promised more bitcoin in return. Victims are also promised a chance at winning more. In some cases, the hackers have apparently paid Twitter to promote the ads. It was not immediately clear why Twitter was not able to stop those promotions from occurring.

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World's largest online retailer to get billions of dollars in tax breaks for the development of its second headquarters.

The surge in hate crimes marks the largest increase in more than a decade, with a sharp spike in anti-Semitic incidents.

UN envoy Ghassan Salame says renegade General Khalifa Haftar 'committed to support' elections in the spring of 2019.

The British Army is testing out over 70 new technologies, including unmanned vehicles and surveillance drones, in a four-week experiment on one of its biggest training grounds. From a report: What sort of stuff? The department isn't giving out specifics but said the focus will be on "surveillance, long-range, and precision targeting, enhanced mobility and the re-supply of forces, urban warfare and enhanced situational awareness." The development is part of a $1030 million "innovation fund" launched in 2016. The aim? Primarily it's about reducing the danger to troops during combat, according to the UK's Ministry of Defense (MoD). One of the main areas it'll test is "last mile" supply of fuel, food, and ammunition. The exercise will culminate in a simulated battle involving over 200 soldiers to test out the ideas and products.

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thegarbz writes: Denuvo, the darling of the DRM industry was once considered by publishers to be the final solution to piracy. Slashdot has documented the slow decline of Denuvo from stories in 2014, and 2016 where publishers were praising Denuvo's success at mitigating piracy for weeks, to its slow decline last year where games were being cracked within "hours" of release. The popular wisdom of publishers in the past considered DRM worth while as it thwarts piracy during the critical sales spike when games are first released. Last week saw Hitman 2, the latest Denuvo protected game get cracked in a short time. The kicker, the game isn't officially released until this Thursday. Publishers are now eroding the potential sale day advantage of DRM through the latest practice of offering games for early release in an attempt to secure an ever larger number of pre-orders for popular titles. This leads to the obvious question: Does DRM make financial sense to include in titles if they risk being cracked before release date? Conversely, does releasing games early to selected customers make financial sense if it results in the DRM being cracked before release?

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Baobab is one of many informal settlements in the capital and provided a lifeline to refugees who fell out the system.

Trump is considering replacing chief of staff, John Kelly, and Homeland Security head, Kirstjen Nielsen, US media report

Microsoft on Wednesday resumed the rollout of Windows 10 version 1809. The re-release of the so-called October 2018 Update comes more than five weeks after the company pulled the original installation files from its download servers and stopped its scheduled delivery through Windows Update. From a report: In a blog post, Microsoft's John Cable, the director of Program Management for Windows Servicing and Delivery, says the data-destroying bug that triggered that unprecedented decision, as well as other quality issues that emerged during the unscheduled hiatus, have been "thoroughly investigated and resolved."

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As fresh truce seemingly takes hold to end latest round of violence, what do recent events say about what's coming next?

US state challenges legality of Trump's appointment of Matthew Whitaker, saying the pick breaks federal law.

An anonymous reader writes: WannaCry, once the greatest cybersecurity calamity in history, now doesn't work. A website critical to its function is now controlled by civic-minded security researchers, and the fixed deadline to pay the ransom has long passed. Yet WannaCry still accounts for 28% of ransomware attacks -- the most of any ransomware family. According to a new study by Kaspersky Lab, the defanged North Korea linked ransomware is still spreading uncontrollably. The spreading mechanism that passed WannaCry from victim to victim that was so virulent in the 2017 attack is still active, even if the ransomware itself isn't. The firm discovered that since the WannaCry outbreak in May 2017 has affected 74,621 users across the globe.

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