An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. Department of the Interior has confirmed it has grounded its fleet of non-emergency drones amid concerns over cybersecurity. In a brief statement, the department said the move will help to ensure that "the technology used for these operations is such that it will not compromise our national security interests." Interior spokesperson Carol Danko said the department affirms with a formal order the "temporary cessation of non-emergency drones while we ensure that cybersecurity, technology and domestic production concerns are adequately addressed," months after the department said it was grounding its approximately 800 drones. But the drones will still be used for emergency purposes, such as search and rescue and assisting with natural disasters, the statement said. The order did not specifically mention threats from China, but said that information collected during drone missions "has the potential to be valuable to foreign entities, organizations, and governments." Danko told TechCrunch that the department currently has 121 drones made by DJI and 665 drones that are Chinese-built but not made by DJI. She added that 24 drones are made in the U.S. but have Chinese components. "The review is to help us identify and assess any potential threats or risks," said Danko.

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Matt Warman, the minister for digital and broadband in the UK, writes: From washing machines and children's toys to personal assistants, we are increasingly seeing more of our daily lives connected to the internet. In fact, research suggests by 2025 there will be 75 billion internet connected devices in homes around the world. However, the current security standards of many of these devices are low and the security and privacy risks are too great. Last week, for example, the usernames and for more 500,000 devices including Internet of Things (IoT) products were made available online. Our aim is to make the UK the world's leading digital economy. But if we are to achieve this ambition we need to make sure people trust technology. I believe we can do this through pro-innovation regulation. So today I've announced we are developing new legislation to hold firms manufacturing and stocking internet-connected devices to account to stop hackers threatening people's privacy and safety. These new laws will mean consumers are protected from devices which do not adhere to the three rigorous security requirements we've developed alongside a code of conduct. These measures will mean all the passwords pre-programmed in internet-connected devices must be unique and not resettable to any universal factory setting.

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harrymcc writes: New legislation in Russia -- known as the 'law against Apple' -- mandates that smartphone makers must preinstall government apps that will give authorities access to an array of information about the phone's user. Apple, not surprisingly, is trying to wriggle its way out of complying. But whatever happens, it's another case of an authoritarian government pushing around a U.S. tech company for very un-democratic reasons. Over at Fast Company, Josh Nadeau reports on the issue and why the stakes are so high.

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Long-time reader schwit1 shares a report: Paris Musees, a group of 14 public museums in Paris, has made a splash by releasing high-res digital images for over 100,000 artworks through a new online portal. All the works were released to the public domain (CC0, or "No Rights Reserved"), and they include 62,599 historic photos by some of the most famous French photographers such as Eugene Atget. The new website, called the Collections portal, was launched on January 8th and offers powerful search and filtering options for finding specific artworks.

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Helios and Matheson Analytics, which owns the defunct MoviePass cinema-subscription service, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. From a report: The company disclosed the move in an SEC filing dated Jan. 28, when Helios and Mathenson filed the petition for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code dissolves an entity, whose assets are sold off to repay creditors (unlike Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in which a company seeks to renegotiate with creditors). In its bankruptcy filing, Helios and Matheson listed the estimated value of assets at between $1 million-$10 million and $60.9 million in total creditor claims. The bankruptcy filing comes after MoviePass in September 2019 notified remaining subscribers that it would be shutting down indefinitely because "its efforts to recapitalize MoviePass have not been successful to date."

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Sophisticated hackers infiltrated U.N. offices in Geneva and Vienna last year in an apparent espionage operation, and their identity and the extent of the data they obtained is unknown. From a report: An internal confidential document from the United Nations, leaked to The New Humanitarian and seen by The Associated Press, says dozens of servers were compromised including at the U.N. human rights office, which collects sensitive data and has often been a lightning rod of criticism from autocratic governments for exposing rights abuses. Asked about the report, one U.N. official told the AP that the hack appeared "sophisticated" and that the extent of the damage remained unclear, especially in terms of personal, secret or compromising information that may have been stolen. The official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity to speak freely about the episode, said systems have since been reinforced. The skill level was so high it is possible a state-backed actor might have been behind it, the official said. "It's as if someone were walking in the sand, and swept up their tracks with a broom afterward," the official said. "There's not even a trace of a clean-up." The leaked Sept. 20 report says logs that would have betrayed the hackers' activities inside the U.N. networks -- what was accessed and what may have been siphoned out -- were "cleared." It also shows that among accounts known to have been accessed were those of domain administrators -- who by default have master access to all user accounts in their purview. "Sadly ... still counting our casualties," the report says.

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Google is working on an initiative to streamline its suite of mobile and browser-based apps for businesses into a singular experience, according to The Information. From a report: The app would combine Gmail, Drive, Hangouts Meet, and Hangouts Chat all in one interface, and would provide easier hooks into products like Google Calendar. Google is notorious for its confusing collection of communication apps, from Hangouts Classic to Hangouts Meet and Duo, as well as others that have been killed off (Wave: never forget), and has stumbled with integration before. The company's unification is clearly designed to push back against Microsoft's growth of its Teams product with larger, more established companies. Additionally, Slack has become the de facto method of realtime collaboration and communication among startups. Slack has made integrations with Google products simple while pushing users away from traditional chat like Hangouts, while Microsoft has gone through a renaissance of sorts, releasing a bevy of redesigned communications apps, like Outlook, to positive reviews.

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I hit a snag implementing cmd-return in LO2. It worked fine as long as there was no HTML markup in the text. I explain in this video, to the best of my ability, why that seems like it should be utterly simple, but isn't. (This feature isn't released yet.)

Scientists should stop using the very worst predictions for carbon emissions, a study suggests.

An anonymous reader writes: The Google security team has indefinitely suspended the publishing or updating of any commercial Chrome extensions on the official Chrome Web Store following a spike in the number of paid extensions engaging in fraudulent transactions. Google said the wave of fraudulent transactions began earlier this month. Google engineers described the fraudulent transactions as happening "at scale." "This is a temporary measure meant to stem this influx as we look for long-term solutions to address the broader pattern of abuse," said Simeon Vincent, Developer Advocate for Chrome Extensions at Google. The ban on publishing or updating impacts all paid extensions. This includes Chrome extensions that require paying a fee before installing, extensions that work based on monthly subscriptions, or Chrome extensions that use one-time in-app purchases to get access to various features. Existing commercial extensions are still available for download via the official Chrome Web Store, however, extension developers can't push new updates.

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The American start-up Capella says it's now ready to deploy its fleet of all-weather Earth observers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On Wednesday, research firm Canalys reported that Apple shipped close to 925,000 iPhone units in India in Q4 2019, up over 200% annually, in what is the company's most impressive quarter in the world's second largest smartphone market to date. Madhumita Chaudhary, an analyst with the research firm, said the company's move to partner with a local bank to make iPhone 11 more affordable helped it hit "a home-run with its pricing strategy" in the country. The iPhone 11, currently available for sale in the country at 64,900 Indian rupees ($909), is available for as low as $550 for some HDFC bank customers. More than 80% of the population in India earns less than $200 a month and smartphones are sold without any bundling with carrier. If that wasn't a tough sell for Apple already, India's local laws have made iPhones even more expensive. Most iPhone models are especially expensive in India as Apple passes on the local import taxes that it pays to the government to its customers in the country. New Delhi maintains strict import duties, but it offers a range of tax benefits to companies that manufacture or assemble their electronic products locally in the nation. The report also claims that Apple plans to start selling iPhones in India online starting Q3 of this year.

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From a report: The workers of Mechanical Turk, Amazon's on-demand micro-task platform, say they have encountered mutilated bodies, graphic videos of botched surgeries, and what appeared to be child pornography. They say they have been asked to transcribe Social Security numbers and other personal data. Sometimes their temporary bosses, "requesters" in Amazon's parlance, allegedly ask their anonymized employees to send along their underwear, take photos of their feet, or to draw pictures of their genitals. They say they have been paid to recount traumatic instances in their lives -- a cancer diagnosis, severe depression, or the death of a loved one -- often for less than a dollar. These are some of 1,100 responses to two surveys Gizmodo recently posed to gig workers on Mechanical Turk asking for their experiences using the platform. Unlike the tribulations of Amazon's warehouse workers, which have been well documented, the experiences of gig workers on Mechanical Turk are far less visible.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has paid out over $21 million since launching its bug bounty program in November 2010. In the past year alone, the company distributed $6.5 million to 461 different security researchers, almost double the previous record set in 2018: $3.4 million to 317 different security researchers. Bug bounty programs motivate individuals and hacker groups to not only find flaws but disclose them properly, instead of using them maliciously or selling them to parties that will. Rewarding security researchers with bounties costs peanuts compared to paying for a serious security snafu.

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