An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly issuing alerts to wireless telecom providers and law enforcement agencies about potential attacks on cell towers and telecommunications workers by 5G/coronavirus conspiracy theorists. The DHS warned that there have already been "arson and physical attacks against cell towers in several U.S. states." The preposterous claim that 5G can spread the coronavirus, either by suppressing the immune system or by directly transmitting the virus over radio waves, led to dozens of tower burnings in the UK and mainland Europe. Now, the DHS "is preparing to advise the U.S. telecom industry on steps it can take to prevent attacks on 5G cell towers following a rash of incidents in Western Europe fueled by the false claim that the technology spreads the pathogen causing COVID-19," The Washington Post reported last week. The DHS alert will include "advice on ways to reduce the risk of attack, including installing appropriate sensing and barriers, cyber-intrusion detection systems, closed-circuit television and monitoring drone activity near towers," the Post article said. A telecom-industry official said that carriers in the U.S. "have seen sporadic attacks on their cell towers that were apparently prompted by COVID-19 disinformation" over the past few weeks, the Post wrote. In addition to warning telecoms, DHS reportedly issued an intelligence report on the topic "to senior federal officials and law enforcement agencies around the country," ABC News reported Saturday. DHS also teamed with the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center to issue a joint intelligence bulletin to federal officials and law enforcement agencies, the ABC News report said.

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Square employees will be able to work from home even after the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders end, Jack Dorsey told workers. From a report: The indefinite extension of the company's remote work policy echoes a similar announcement from Twitter last week. Dorsey is CEO of both companies. "We want employees to be able to work where they feel most creative and productive," a company spokesperson told The Verge. "Moving forward, Squares will be able to work from home permanently, even once offices begin to reopen. Over the past several weeks, we've learned a lot about what it takes for people to effectively perform roles outside of an office, and we will continue to learn as we go."

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China's state-backed funds pumped $2.25 billion into a Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. wafer plant to support advanced-chip making as Washington tightens technology restrictions on the Asian nation. From a report: The Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. plant's registered capital jumps from $3.5 billion to $6.5 billion after the investment, the company said in an announcement on Friday. The chipmaker's stake in the Shanghai facility will drop from 50.1% to 38.5%, it said. The plant has capacity to produce 6,000 14-nanometer wafers a month and plans to boost that to 35,000. The new investment came as Washington moved to prevent sales to Huawei by chipmakers using U.S. technology. The Commerce Department on Friday said it would require licenses before allowing U.S. technology to be used by the Chinese company or its 114 subsidiaries, including its chip-design unit HiSilicon.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin once called Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, a "lone warrior." Putin was joking, but that description is starting to look more and more accurate. Russia has joined about 100 countries in backing a resolution at the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA), calling for an independent inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic. From a report: The European Union-drafted resolution comes on the back of a push by Australia for an inquiry into China's initial handling of the crisis. That was met with an angry response from Beijing, which accused Canberra of a "highly irresponsible" move that could "disrupt international cooperation in fighting the pandemic and goes against people's shared aspiration." While the resolution to be presented at the annual meeting of World Health Organization (WHO) members, which begins on Monday in Geneva, does not single out China or any other country, it calls for an "impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation" of "the (WHO)-coordinated international health response to Covid-19." The wording of the resolution is weak compared to Australia's previous calls for a probe into China's role and responsibility in the origin of the pandemic. This may have been necessary to get a majority of WHO member states to sign on -- particularly those, such as Russia, with traditionally strong ties to Beijing. But that doesn't mean China's government should rest easy. The potential for an independent probe, even one not initially tasked with investigating an individual country's response, to turn up damning or embarrassing information is great. Australian government sources told the ABC, the country's public broadcaster, that the resolution's language was sufficiently strong to "ensure that a proper and thorough investigation took place."

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After months of trying, the FBI successfully broke into iPhones belonging to the gunman responsible for a deadly shooting at Pensacola Naval Air Station in December 2019, and it now claims he had associations with terrorist organization al-Qaeda. Investigators managed to do so without Apple's help, but Attorney General William Barr and FBI director Christopher Wray both voiced strong frustration with the iPhone maker at a press conference on Monday morning. From a report: Both officials say that encryption on the gunman's devices severely hampered the investigation. "Thanks to the great work of the FBI -- and no thanks to Apple -- we were able to unlock Alshamrani's phones," said Barr, who lamented the months and "large sums of tax-payer dollars" it took to get into devices of Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, who killed three US sailors and injured eight other people on December 6th. Apple has said it provided investigators with iCloud data it had available for Alshamrani's account but did not provide any assistance bypassing iOS's device encryption. Without that help, authorities spent many weeks trying to break in on their own. Wray chastised Apple for wasting the agency's time and resources to unlock the devices. "Public servants, already swamped with important things to do to protect the American people -- and toiling through a pandemic, with all the risk and hardship that entails -- had to spend all that time just to access evidence we got court-authorized search warrants for months ago," he said.

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The source code for "smart car" components installed in Mercedez-Benz vans has been leaked online over the weekend, ZDNet has learned. From the report: The leak occurred after Till Kottmann, a Swiss-based software engineer, discovered a Git web portal belonging to Daimler AG, the German automotive company behind the Mercedes-Benz car brand. Kottmann told ZDNet that he was able to register an account on Daimler's code-hosting portal, and then download more than 580 Git repositories containing the source code of onboard logic units (OLUs) installed in Mercedez vans. According to the Daimler website, the OLU is a component that sits between the car's hardware and software, and "connects vehicles to the cloud." Daimler says the OLU "simplifies technical access and the management of live vehicle data" and allows third-party developers to create apps that retrieve data from Mercedes vans. These apps are usually employed for features such as tracking vans while on the road, tracking a van's internal status, or for freezing vans in case of theft.

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Minecraft has already become an international phenomenon, but it keeps getting bigger. Microsoft said its 11-year-old world-building game crossed 200 million copies sold, with more than 126 million people playing each month. From a report: Much of the game's recent success has come during the coronavirus pandemic. Microsoft said that in April, it tallied a 25% increase in the number of new players joining its game community, and a 40% spike in the number of people playing together. "In these extraordinary times, we're reminded more than ever before of the important role games like Minecraft can play in providing an escape from the day-to-day and fostering social connections between friends and families," Helen Chiang, Microsoft's head of Minecraft studio Mojang, wrote in a blog post Monday. The announcement came ahead of Microsoft's Build developer event, being held online May 19-20.

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SoftBank Group said its Vision Fund business lost 1.9 trillion yen ($17.7 billion) last fiscal year after writing down the value of investments, including WeWork and Uber. From a report: The company posted an overall operating loss of 1.36 trillion yen in the 12 months ended March and a net loss of 961.6 billion yen, according to a statement on Monday. The Tokyo-based conglomerate released figures in two preliminary earnings statements last month. The losses are the worst ever in the company's 39-year history. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son's $100 billion Vision Fund went from the group's main contributor to profit a year ago to its biggest drag on earnings. Uber's disappointing public debut last May was followed by the implosion of WeWork in September and its subsequent rescue by SoftBank. Now Son is struggling with the impact of the coronavirus on the portfolio of startups weighted heavily toward the sharing economy. 50 of the Vision Fund's 88 portfolio companies had a cut in valuation in the 12 months to March 31, 2020, said Son, adding that 15 could soon file for bankruptcy.

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Uber is cutting several thousand additional jobs [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], closing more than three dozen offices and re-evaluating big bets in areas ranging from freight to self-driving technology as Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi attempts to steer the ride-hailing giant through the coronavirus pandemic. From a report: Mr. Khosrowshahi announced the plans in an email to staff Monday, less than two weeks after the company said it would eliminate about 3,700 jobs and planned to save more than $1 billion in fixed costs. Monday's decision to close 45 offices and lay off some additional 3,000 people means Uber is shedding roughly a quarter of its workforce in under a month. Drivers aren't classified as employees, so they aren't included. Stay-at-home orders have ravaged Uber's core ride-hailing business, which accounted for three-quarters of the company's revenue before the pandemic struck. Uber's rides business was down 80% year-over-year in April.

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A rise in electric-bikes would extend the range of cyclists using them to commute, a study finds.

Scientists make a surprising discovery about the Red Planet by playing with mud in the laboratory.

We're seeing videos of customers going crazy in stores. This had to happen. People are under great stress. On both sides of the counter. It's going to get worse and worse.

Pretty much everything in the news that draws attention away from the danger of the virus is imho off-topic, maybe even unethical. Your readers are in danger. Many don't know it. Find ways to make them understand.

Cuomo is going to make mistakes. At least he's managing the state's response to the virus. Other states can't say they have a governor doing that. And the country doesn't have a president. Also, be careful what you call a mistake with the benefit of hindsight.

Microsoft and FedEx announced a joint, multi-year partnership on Monday that the pair believe could help "transform commerce" through FedEx's logistics network and Microsoft's cloud. From a report: The two said their first service, called FedEx Surround, will give real-time analytics into supply chain and delivery, so companies could potentially better ship goods. The companies did not disclose the full nature of the partnership, including how much FedEx will be paying Microsoft to use its Azure cloud technology. But the partnership represents yet another example of Amazon rivals choosing to go with Microsoft's cloud offering over the cloud computing market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon and FedEx have been increasingly competitive with each other as Amazon invests heavily in building out its own shipping network. FedEx announced last year that it would end its ground-delivery contract with Amazon.

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