"Amazon Web Services on Wednesday launched Amazon Honeycode, a fully-managed service that enables companies to build mobile and web applications without any programming," reports ZDNet: Customers can use the service to build apps that leverage an AWS-built database, such as a simple task-tracking application or a more complex project management app to manage multiple workflows. "Customers have told us that the need for custom applications far outstrips the capacity of developers to create them," AWS VP Larry Augustin said in a statement. Low-code and no-code tools have been growing in popularity in recent years, enabling people with little or no coding experience to be able to build the applications they need. Other major cloud companies like Salesforce offer low-code app builders. With IT teams stretched thin during the COVID-19 pandemic, low-code tools can prove particularly useful. Customers "can get started by selecting a pre-built template, where the data model, business logic, and applications are pre-defined and ready-to-use..." Amazon explains in a press release. "Or, they can import data into a blank workbook, use the familiar spreadsheet interface to define the data model, and design the application screens with objects like lists, buttons, and input fields. "Builders can also add automations to their applications to drive notifications, reminders, approvals, and other actions based on conditions. Once the application is built, customers simply click a button to share it with team members."

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The iPhone that Moroccan journalist Omar Radi used to contact his sources also allowed his government to spy on him (and at least two other journalists), reports the Toronto Star, citing new research from Amnesty International. Slashdot reader Iwastheone shares their report: Their government could read every email, text and website visited; listen to every phone call and watch every video conference; download calendar entries, monitor GPS coordinates, and even turn on the camera and microphone to see and hear where the phone was at any moment. Yet Radi was trained in encryption and cyber security. He hadn't clicked on any suspicious links and didn't have any missed calls on WhatsApp — both well-documented ways a cell phone can be hacked. Instead, a report published Monday by Amnesty International shows Radi was targeted by a new and frighteningly stealthy technique. All he had to do was visit one website. Any website. Forensic evidence gathered by Amnesty International on Radi's phone shows that it was infected by "network injection," a fully automated method where an attacker intercepts a cellular signal when it makes a request to visit a website. In milliseconds, the web browser is diverted to a malicious site and spyware code is downloaded that allows remote access to everything on the phone. The browser then redirects to the intended website and the user is none the wiser. Two more human rights advocates in Morocco have been targeted by the same malware, the article reports.

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"A proposal under consideration by Python's development team would finally bring pattern matching statements to the language," reports InfoWorld: The creators of the Python language are mulling a new proposal, PEP 622, that would finally bring a pattern matching statement syntax to Python. The new pattern matching statements would give Python programmers more expressive ways of handling structured data, without having to resort to workarounds... While Python has lacked a native syntax for pattern matching, it has been possible to emulate it with if/elif/else chains or a dictionary lookup. PEP 622 proposes a method for matching an expression against a number of kinds of patterns using a match/case syntax: match something: case 0 | 1 | 2: print("Small number") case [] | [_]: print("A short sequence") case str() | bytes(): print("Something string-like") case _: print("Something else") Supported pattern match types include literals, names, constant values, sequences, a mapping (basically, the presence of a key-value pair in the expression), a class, a mixture of the above, or any of those plus conditional expressions. Any matches that are ambiguous or impossible to resolve will throw an exception at runtime... If an object implements the __match__ method, it can be used to test if it matches a given class pattern and return an appropriate response. One of the authors of the new PEP was Python creator Guido van Rossum, according to the article -- and he'd drafted an earlier pattern matching proposal back in 2006 that was rejected (following the rejection of an earlier proposal in 2001). The article also notes that many aspects of this PEP were inspired by the way pattern matching works in Rust and Scala.

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Both Edge and Chrome already allow users to try unreleased, experimental features (by typing about:flags in the address bar). Soon there'll be a similar "Firefox Experiments" option starting in Firefox 79. Slashdot reader techtsp shares this report from the Windows Club: Mozilla has a dedicated Experimental Features page on MDN just for that. But limiting experimental features to Firefox's Nightly channel has a limitation: A fairly limited number of "curious" users. Now, extending some of these experimental features to stable releases will increase the scope of "Firefox Experiments" as a whole... This option will allow users to enable/disable experimental features under Preferences... [In Firefox 79] Navigate to Preferences by entering about:preferences in the browser's address bar or click the gear icon and got to "Preferences." Discover and set browser.preferences.experimental to True. Now, you should be able to see the "Firefox Experiments" menu under Firefox 79 Preferences.

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Scientists discover hundreds of different fungi in Amazonian soil, thought to play a vital role in nature.

In the meantime, I think I found what was screwing up my new server. nodeStorage has a feature, that by default is enabled, where it checks with the GitHub repository every 15 minutes and downloads changes. It doesn't restart the app, so you don't see the effect of changes until you restart. The apps are running in the new version of PagePark that has Forever integrated. The way it knows which JavaScript file to run is via the main attribute in package.json. Well, at some point, the app checks with GitHub, sees that its version of package.json is different from the one I have, and downloads it, replacing the one I customized. Ooops. That version does not have a main attribute. So next time I launch PagePark, which I am doing a lot of these days as I debug it and add features, the nodeStorage-based apps don't run. Vexing little bug. The feature should probably default to off. Thing is, when you implement a clever feature like this you want it to default on. Then years later it bites you in the ass. That my friends is the way programming works, when it doesn't work.

We're going to start on the road out of racism in the US when intelligent, loving, courageous, driven and visionary people of all races decide to listen to each other and find things we can do that benefit everyone regardless of race, now -- immediately, not some time in the future. Not symbolic things, but stuff that "saves my life". Same is true for sexism, ageism, etc.

In February, Reddit's CEO called TikTok "fundamentally parasitic," according to a report on TechCrunch, adding "it's always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone... I actively tell people, 'Don't install that spyware on your phone.'" TikTok called his remarks "baseless accusations made without a shred of evidence." But now Apple "has fixed a serious problem in iOS 14, due in the fall, where apps can secretly access the clipboard on users' devices..." reports Forbes cybersecurity contributor Zak Doffman, noting that one of the biggest offenders it revealed still turns out to be TikTok: Worryingly, one of the apps caught snooping [in March] by security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk was China's TikTok. Given other security concerns raised about the app, as well as broader worries given its Chinese origins, this became a headline issue. At the time, TikTok owner Bytedance told me the problem related to the use of an outdated Google advertising SDK that was being replaced. Well, maybe not. With the release of the new clipboard warning in the beta version of iOS 14, now with developers, TikTok seems to have been caught abusing the clipboard in a quite extraordinary way. So it seems that TikTok didn't stop this invasive practice back in April as promised after all. Worse, the excuse has now changed. According to TikTok, the issue is now "triggered by a feature designed to identify repetitive, spammy behavior," and has told me that it has "already submitted an updated version of the app to the App Store removing the anti-spam feature to eliminate any potential confusion." In other words: We've been caught doing something we shouldn't, we've rushed out a fix... iOS users can relax, knowing that Apple's latest safeguard will force TikTok to make the change, which in itself shows how critical a fix this has been. For Android users, though, there is no word yet as to whether this is an issue for them as well. Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 also shares an online rumor from an anonymous Redditor (with a 7-year-old account) who claims to be a software engineer who's reverse engineered TikTok's software and learned more scary things, concluding that TikTok is a "data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network." So far the most reputable news outlets that have repeated his allegations are Bored Panda, Stuff, Hot Hardware, and Illinois radio station WBNQ.

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Long-time Slashdot reader UnderAttack writes: In September last year, German police raided what was known as "Cyberbunker 2.0", a former cold war nuclear bunker turned into a "bulletproof" hosting facility. A student of the internet security-training company SANS Technology Institute analyzed traffic reaching out for the former Cyberbunker's IP address space. Over two weeks, thousands of bots called "home" still looking for a command and control server. They also observed a number of phishing sites, as well as an odd ad network still directing users to the Cyberbunker's IPs. You can find the summary here.

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For the next few days Radio3 will be unreliable if the past couple of days are any indication. I'm retooling the server, and grappling with some mysterious problems. BTW, the reason I asked about a Hello World app for WordPress is that if there's an easy way to get WordPress support working again in Radio3, (the WP API changed some time back and broke Radio3 in this regard), I will. But I don't have time to do a deep-dive into the WordPress API at this time.

"Charter Communications has asked federal regulators for permission to impose data caps on broadband users and to seek interconnection payments from large online video providers, starting next year," writes Ars Technica. Long-time Slashdot reader Proudrooster shares their report: Charter, unlike other ISPs, isn't allowed to impose data caps and faces limits on charges for interconnection payments because of conditions applied to its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable. The conditions were imposed by the Federal Communications Commission for seven years and are scheduled to elapse in May 2023. Last week, Charter submitted a petition asking the FCC to let the conditions run out on May 18, 2021 instead. The FCC is seeking public comment on the petition... When it sought FCC permission for the merger, it told the FCC that it provides service "without any data caps, usage-based pricing, or modem fees" and that it "has been involved in no notable disputes over traffic management and has long practiced network neutrality." When contacted by Ars yesterday, Charter said it doesn't "currently" plan to impose data caps or change its interconnection policy, but it wants the option to do so.

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The Corkman will lead a three-party coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party.

Sweden's population is not quite twice the size of Norway's — yet Sweden has reported 21 times as many deaths from Covid-19, prompting many countries to close its border to Sweden, reports the New York Times: Norway isn't the only Scandinavian neighbor barring Swedes from visiting this summer. Denmark and Finland have also closed their borders to Swedes, fearing that they would bring new coronavirus infections with them. While those countries went into strict lockdowns this spring, Sweden famously refused, and now has suffered roughly twice as many infections and five times as many deaths as the other three nations combined, according to figures compiled by The New York Times. While reporting differences can make comparisons inexact, the overall trend is clear, as is Sweden's new status as Scandinavia's pariah state... "When you see 5,000 deaths in Sweden and 230 in Norway, it is quite incredible," said Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway and the former director of the World Health Organization, during a digital lecture at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in May... Swedes now find themselves with few options for moving about the European Union. Most countries in the bloc have reopened their borders to member nations, but only France, Italy, Spain and Croatia are welcoming Swedes without restrictions. On a popular Scandinavian radio program, a journalist with a leading Swedish paper complained about how Sweden was being treated by its neighboring countries, according to the Times. "We are supposed to sit here in our corner of shame, and the worst part is that you're savoring it." The BBC notes that just days later, on Wednesday, Sweden reported 1,610 new infections — roughly one infection for every 6,354 people in Sweden and its highest number of daily infections since the outbreak began.

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Just three other well-preserved vessels from the period have been discovered in the Scandinavian country.

Filters can cut ocean-bound microplastics from washing machines, but more tests are needed, study finds.