Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, is willing to testify before a House antitrust investigation (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) into the market power of major tech companies alongside other chief executives, a lawyer for Amazon wrote to lawmakers on Sunday. The New York Times reports: Amazon had resisted making him available to the House Judiciary Committee, the group overseeing the antitrust investigation, prompting lawmakers to threaten to legally compel Mr. Bezos to testify. The panel is likely to question Mr. Bezos, the world's richest person, about claims that Amazon boxes out small businesses, abuses its power and mistreats warehouse workers. If he testifies before the committee, it will be Mr. Bezos' first appearance before Congress. In the letter sent on Sunday, Robert K. Kelner of the law firm Covington & Burling, which is representing Amazon before the congressional investigation, said the company was "committed to cooperating with your inquiry and will make the appropriate executive available to testify." He added: "This includes making Jeff Bezos available to testify at a hearing with the other C.E.O.s this summer." Mr. Kelner said Mr. Bezos' availability was dependent on first resolving several issues, including timing, format and questions about the committee's request for internal documents.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Americans drove 40 percent more miles in 2019 than they did in 1994, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. More driving means more congested traffic. So to reduce congestion, it makes sense to build more highway lanes so that more cars can fit. Right? Actually, no. A new report from the policy organization Transportation for America shows that doesn't work at all. Between 1993 and 2017, the researchers found that the largest urban areas in the U.S. added 30,511 new lane-miles of roads -- a 42 percent increase. That's a faster rate of growth than population growth, which rose by 32 percent in those cities over the same time period. But in that 24 year period, traffic congestion didn't drop at all. In fact, it rose by 144 percent even as states spent more than $500 billion on highway capital investments in urbanized areas, and a sizable portion of which went toward highway expansion. That means governments spent billions, and the end result was Americans wasting more time frustrated on the highway, sitting in cars that spew out climate-warming and neighborhood-polluting emissions. That's because when you build more highways, people start driving more and filling up the lanes in a matter of years. From 1993 to 2017, the average person drove 20 percent more miles. Right after a highway is widened, traffic does speed up, and drivers take advantage of that by "switching from other routes, driving further distances or traveling during the busiest time of the day," the report, which looked at federal and state data on traffic and freeway growth, says. "People who had previously avoided congestion -- whether by riding transit, carpooling, traveling during less congested times of day, or foregoing the trip altogether -- start driving on that route more because it has become more convenient."

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A random screen shot for docs I'm writing. This is what a table for the command line tool I wrote for PagePark displays. It's equivalent to the table that Forever displays at the command line.

T-Mobile appears to be having problems. TechCrunch: Customers are reporting that they can't make or receive phone calls, although data and text messages seem to be unaffected. DownDetector, which collects outage reports from users, indicates that a major outage is underway. It's not clear how widespread the issue is, but at the time of writing T-Mobile was trending across the United States on Twitter. The outage appears to have started around 10am PT (1pm ET) on Monday. In our own tests in New York and Seattle, we found that making calls from a T-Mobile phone would fail almost immediately after placing the call. We also found that the cell service on our phones were intermittent, with bars occasionally dropping to zero or losing access to high-speed data.

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One study promised that popular blood-pressure drugs were safe for people infected with the coronavirus. Another paper warned that anti-malaria drugs endorsed by President Trump actually were dangerous to these patients. The studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, were retracted shortly after publication, following an outcry from researchers who saw obvious flaws. From a report: The hasty retractions, on the same day this month, have alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process and opened the door to fraud, threatening the credibility of respected medical journals just when they are needed most. Peer review is supposed to safeguard the quality of scientific research. When a journal receives a manuscript, the editors ask three or more experts in the field for comments. The reviewers' written assessments may force revisions in a paper or prompt the journal to reject the work altogether. The system, widely adopted by medical journals in the middle of the 20th century, undergirds scientific discourse around the world. "The problem with trust is that it's too easy to lose and too hard to get back," said Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, which published one of the retracted papers in early May. "These are big blunders." If outside scientists detected problems that weren't identified by the peer reviewers, then the journals failed, he said. Like hundreds of other researchers, Dr. Kassirer called on the editors to publish full explanations of what happened.

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For the last few years, Microsoft has given Windows enthusiasts the ability to opt in to early release "rings," with the choice to pick between "fast" and "slow" rings, as well as a relatively stable "release preview" option. Today, the company announced a major change to this program as it is moving to release channels, similar to what you're probably familiar with from most browser manufacturers. From a report: "We are transitioning and converting our current ring model, based on the frequency of builds, to a new channel model that pivots on the quality of builds and better supports parallel coding efforts," writes Microsoft principal program manager lead Amanda Langowski in a blog post today. She notes that the result of the ring-based system was that in the middle of 2019, for example, Windows Insiders were running builds from three different releases, depending on which ring they chose. "As we continue to evolve the way we release Windows 10 and the diversity of Insiders we serve is greater than ever, it is critical that Insiders have a flighting option that is tailored to their needs," she adds. "We believe the best way to do this is to shift focus from frequency to quality."

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No cases of coronavirus have been linked to two Missouri hairstylists who saw 140 clients last month while symptomatic, county health officials said. Both stylists worked at the same Great Clips location in Springfield. The clients and the stylists all wore face coverings, and the salon had set up other measures such as social distancing of chairs and staggered appointments, the Springfield-Greene County Health Department said last week. From a report: Of the 140 clients and seven co-workers potentially exposed, 46 took tests that came back negative. All the others were quarantined for the duration of the coronavirus incubation period. The 14-day incubation period has now passed with no coronavirus cases linked to the salon beyond the two stylists, county health officials said. During the quarantine, those who did not get tested got a call twice a day from health officials asking whether they had symptoms related to Covid-19, said Kathryn Wall, a spokeswoman for the Springfield-Green County Health Department. "This is exciting news about the value of masking to prevent Covid-19," said Clay Goddard, the county's director of health. "We are studying more closely the details of these exposures, including what types of face coverings were worn and what other precautions were taken to lead to this encouraging result."

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I missed the anniversary again. 18 years ago yesterday, I quit smoking. The number of cigarettes I've had since, zero. Not one. Yet I still sometimes dream that I'm a smoker, buying packs of Marlboro Lights on the sly, feeling guilty that I'm lying to my friends when secretly I'm still a smoker. I quit smoking because the arteries on my heart were so clogged that they didn't work anymore. I had to get blood vessels from my legs and chest transplanted to bypass the blockages. These continue to work to this day, keeping me alive, riding my bike, writing software and blog posts that seem to make some people happy and piss other people off but are ignored by almost everyone. Makes sense. Anyway, I wrote something on my blog a few days after I quit. "I figured something out in the hospital. I'm the kind of person who likes to solve problems by smoking. How do I know this? Because every time my mind encounters a problem it says "OK, I'll just have a cigarette then." I bet a lot of other cigarette smokers deal with problems the same way. Now that I don't smoke, I still have the idea that smoking will help me deal with problems. It's funny, one part of my brain has figured out that this is wrong (in fact smoking causes more problems than it solves) but a deeper part of my brain still believes it. This leads to some funny arguments inside my brain. But so far so good. I got to go through the worst of the withdrawal in a hospital where there was no possibility of smoking, and now the craving seems manageable. No doubt other people have smoking stories to tell. I was one of the lucky ones, I survived to tell my story. So far so good."

Facebook has brought payments to WhatsApp for the first time, starting in Brazil. The new feature is powered by Facebook Pay, a unified payment service first introduced back in 2018. The company said at the time that it planned to enable the service across its suite of apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram. From a report: News emerged earlier this year that WhatsApp payments were going to launch first in India, but it has remained in private beta since then due to regulatory issues. The Brazil launch marks the first full countrywide launch for payments in WhatsApp and signals a new way for Facebook to monetize the messaging app, after having struggled to do so since acquiring it for around $19 billion back in 2014. Facebook Pay is currently available in about 40 countries around the world, though it's limited to the main Facebook app in most markets. The only exceptions to this are in the U.S., where it's also available through Facebook's Messenger app, and now Brazil, where it's also available in WhatsApp.

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A joint European-Russian satellite observes a light in Mars’ atmosphere that's generated by oxygen.

Six eBay employees including a former police captain in California last year engaged in a relentless campaign of harassment and cyberstalking of a Natick couple that published a newsletter critical of the online retailer, sending items including fly larvae, live spiders, and a bloody pig mask to their home and travelling to Massachusetts to conduct surveillance of the victims in an effort to get them to stop publishing, authorities alleged Monday. From a report: During a news conference, US Attorney Andrew E. Lelling said the defendants conducted a "systematic campaign fueled by the resources of a Fortune 500 company to emotionally and psychologically terrorize this middle-aged couple in Natick." Lelling's words were echoed by Joseph R. Bonavolonta, FBI special agent in charge of the bureau's Boston office, who cited the suspects' "elaborate and relentless campaign to stifle the publishers of an online newsletter out of fear that bad publicity would adversely impact" the company. Court papers identify the defendants as James Baugh, David Harville, Stephanie Popp, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Stockwell, and Veronica Zea. Lelling said Baugh was arrested in New York. It wasn't immediately clear when he'd make his initial appearance in US District Court in Boston. The remaining defendants, including Gilbert, the former police captain, weren't yet in custody as of noontime Monday. According to Lellling, the now-fired eBay officials also sent items including pornography to the couple's neighbors in the couple's names, posted listings on Craigslist urging swingers and couples to come to the Natick couples' home to party every night after 10 pm, and created fake social media accounts to send messages to the couple including one that said, "do I have your attention now?" A complaint filed in the case by FBI Special Agent Mark Wilson said the "campaign included: sending anonymous, threatening communications to the Victims; ordering unwanted and disturbing deliveries to their home, including funeral wreaths and books on surviving the loss of a spouse; and BAUGH, HARVILLE, Zea, and Popp travelling to Natick to surveil the Victims at their home and in their community." It wasn't immediately clear if any of the suspects had retained lawyers to speak on their behalf. According to the complaint, two eBay officials, identified in court papers only as Executive 1 and Executive 2, followed the couple's newsletter with interest. In April 2019, Executive 2 told Executive 1 via text message, "We are going to crush this lady," referring to the woman who put out the newsletter along with her husband, the complaint said.

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Facebook has rejected a proposal to share advertising revenue with news organisations, saying there would "not be significant" impacts on its business if it stopped sharing news altogether. From a report: On Monday, the social media giant issued its response to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which has been tasked with creating a mandatory code of conduct aimed at levelling the playing field. The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, told the ACCC to develop a code after multiple Australian media companies and regional newspapers cut jobs, or folded entirely, as a result of advertising downturn during the Covid-19 pandemic. Facebook and Google have previously refused to accept they needed to pay for using news content. In its submission to the watchdog, Facebook said it rejected many of the ACCC's potential ideas, and said there was a "healthy rivalry" between itself and news organisations. The social media giant said it supported the idea of a code of conduct between digital platforms and news publishers, but that itself and Google were being "singled out" unfairly. Facebook also said it could cut out news completely without any significant impact on its business.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday delivered a watershed victory for LGBT rights, ruling that a landmark federal law forbidding workplace discrimination protects gay and transgender employees. From a report: The 6-3 ruling represented the biggest moment for LGBT rights in the United States since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015. In the new ruling, the justices decided that gay and transgender people are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex as well as race, color, national origin and religion. Workplace bias against gay and transgender employees has remained legal in much of the country, with 28 U.S. states lacking comprehensive measures against employment discrimination. The rulings -- in two gay rights cases from Georgia and New York and a transgender rights case from Michigan -- recognize new worker protections in federal law.

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A podcast about how I merged PagePark with Forever. A few weeks ago I did a podcast where I explained how the pieces came together for Frontier in the late 80s and early 90s. I was thinking about that then because a similar thing was happening with PagePark and Forever. I was putting the two of them together and had an aha moment where the pieces snapped together. PagePark has a very simple idea of what a website is, it's a sub-folder of the domains folder. The name of the sub-folder is the domain that maps to that content. The aha was realizing that you could also put a Node app, to be managed by Forever, which is a package you can integrate into an app, in one of those folders too. Not only did it work at a technical level, but it also provides Frontier-like integration. It's very nice. I've been managing apps in this little world for a couple of weeks now. Anyway that's what this podcast explains.

The history of hacking has largely been a back-and-forth game, with attackers devising a technique to breach a system, defenders constructing a countermeasure that prevents the technique, and hackers devising a new way to bypass system security. On Monday, Intel is announcing its plans to bake a new parry directly into its CPUs that's designed to thwart software exploits that execute malicious code on vulnerable computers. From a report: Control-Flow Enforcement Technology, or CET, represents a fundamental change in the way processors execute instructions from applications such as Web browsers, email clients, or PDF readers. Jointly developed by Intel and Microsoft, CET is designed to thwart a technique known as return-oriented programming, which hackers use to bypass anti-exploit measures software developers introduced about a decade ago. While Intel first published its implementation of CET in 2016, the company on Monday is saying that its Tiger Lake CPU microarchitecture will be the first to include it. ROP, as return-oriented programming is usually called, was software exploiters' response to protections such as Executable Space Protection and address space layout randomization, which made their way into Windows, macOS, and Linux a little less than two decades ago. These defenses were designed to significantly lessen the damage software exploits could inflict by introducing changes to system memory that prevented the execution of malicious code. Even when successfully targeting a buffer overflow or other vulnerability, the exploit resulted only in a system or application crash, rather than a fatal system compromise.

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