More than one million people have given up smoking since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, a survey for charity Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) suggests. From a report: Of those who had quit in the previous four months, 41% said it was in direct response to coronavirus. Separately, University College London (UCL) found more people quit smoking in the year to June 2020 than in any year since its survey began in 2007. Government advice says smokers may be at risk of more severe Covid symptoms. Between 15 April and 20 June, a representative sample of 10,000 people, enrolled by pollster YouGov on behalf of Ash, were asked about their smoking habits. The results were used to estimate the total number of people giving up smoking in the UK. Just under half of people who had quit in the past four months said the pandemic had played a role in their decision. That may have been down to a range of factors including health concerns, access to tobacco while isolating or no longer smoking socially. A team at University College London has been asking 1,000 people a month in England about their smoking habits since 2007 as part of the Smoking Toolkit Study.

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The heatwave would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change, a study says.

Security researcher Marcus Hutchins reports: A bunch of high profile cryptocurrency Twitter accounts have been hijacked to tweet bitcoin scams. Likely a 3rd party App compromise rather that Twitter itself. People / organizations whose accounts appear to have been hijacked include Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Binance, Apple, Cash app, and Ripple. Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of cryptocurrency market Gemini, offered an explanation in a tweet: "ALL MAJOR CRYPTO TWITTER ACCOUNTS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED." TechCrunch reports: These kinds of scams are common. Scammers take over high-profile Twitter accounts using breached or leaked passwords and post messages that encourage users to post their cryptocurrency funds to a particular address under the guise that they'll double their "investment." In reality, it's simple theft, but it's a scam that works. By the time of writing, the blockchain address used on the scam site had already collected 2.8 bitcoin -- some $25,700 in today's currency -- and it's going up by the minute.

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Apple won its court fight over a record 13 billion-euro ($14.9 billion) Irish tax bill in a crushing blow to European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager's crackdown on preferential fiscal deals for companies. From a report: The judgment by the EU's lower court on Wednesday vindicates Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook's challenge against a decision he labeled as "political crap." While the EU General Court's ruling can still be appealed, judges delivered a stinging attack on the European Commission for failing to show "to the requisite legal standard" that Ireland's tax deal broke state-aid law by giving Apple an unfair advantage. "The commission's intent seemed to be a political one: to punish Apple for its overall tax planning, rather than to reach a result that accorded with the legal or economic position," Dan Neidle, a tax lawyer with Clifford Chance said in a statement. "The court has, quite rightly, followed the law and not any wider political objectives."

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Google has become the latest high-profile firm to back India's Reliance Jio Platforms. From a report: The search giant is investing $4.5 billion for a 7.73% stake in the top Indian telecom network, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Wednesday. The investment today from Google is one of the rare instances when the Android-maker has joined its global rival Facebook in backing a firm. Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms, which has amassed more than 400 million subscribers in less than four years of its existence, in April this year for a 9.99% stake in it. Facebook is the largest minority stakeholder in Jio Platforms. Jio Platforms, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries (India's most valued firm) has raised about $20.2 billion in the past four months from 13 investors by selling about 33% stake in the firm. Google's new investment gives Jio Platforms an equity valuation of $58 billion -- the same valuation implied by Facebook. Other investors, including General Atlantic, Silver Lake, Qualcomm, Intel and Vista, have paid a 12.5% premium for their stake in Jio Platforms. As part of Wednesday's strategic announcement, Google and Reliance Jio Platforms will work on a customized-version of Android operating system to develop low-cost, entry-level smartphones to serve the next hundreds of millions of users, said Ambani. These phones will support Google Play and future wireless standard 5G, he said.

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday announced visa restrictions on employees of Chinese technology companies, including Huawei, in the latest Trump administration move against Beijing. From a report: The US "will impose visa restrictions on certain employees ... of Chinese technology companies like Huawei that provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally," Pompeo told reporters at a State Department press briefing. The top US did not elaborate on which employees would be targeted or how many people would be affected. Pompeo's announcement comes a day after President Donald Trump announced he would sign a bill and an executive order punishing China for steps that are widely seen as an attempt to crush democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, and railed at China for "unleashing ... upon the world" the global coronavirus pandemic. In an interview with The Hill later Wednesday, Pompeo added that the US is looking at limits on other Chinese tech companies as well.

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The Central Intelligence Agency has conducted a series of covert cyber operations against Iran and other targets since winning a secret victory in 2018 when President Trump signed what amounts to a sweeping authorization for such activities, Yahoo News reported, citing former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter. From the report: The secret authorization, known as a presidential finding, gives the spy agency more freedom in both the kinds of operations it conducts and who it targets, undoing many restrictions that had been in place under prior administrations. The finding allows the CIA to more easily authorize its own covert cyber operations, rather than requiring the agency to get approval from the White House. Unlike previous presidential findings that have focused on a specific foreign policy objective or outcome -- such as preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power -- this directive, driven by the National Security Council and crafted by the CIA, focuses more broadly on a capability: covert action in cyberspace. The "very aggressive" finding "gave the agency very specific authorities to really take the fight offensively to a handful of adversarial countries," said a former U.S. government official. These countries include Russia, China, Iran and North Korea -- which are mentioned directly in the document -- but the finding potentially applies to others as well, according to another former official. "The White House wanted a vehicle to strike back," said the second former official. "And this was the way to do it." The CIA's new powers are not about hacking to collect intelligence. Instead, they open the way for the agency to launch offensive cyber operations with the aim of producing disruption -- like cutting off electricity or compromising an intelligence operation by dumping documents online -- as well as destruction, similar to the U.S.-Israeli 2009 Stuxnet attack, which destroyed centrifuges that Iran used to enrich uranium gas for its nuclear program.

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According to ABC News, 33-year-old tech entrepreneur Fahim Saleh was discovered decapitated and dismembered in his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday. The death was deemed a homicide and no arrests have been made as of yet. From the report: Saleh co-founded Pathao, a ride-share app that's popular in Bangledash. More recently, he was the CEO of Gokada, a motorcycle ride-sharing and delivery company based Nigeria, which has faced financial setbacks and recently laid off most of its staff. According to surveillance video from Monday, Saleh was seen around 1:40 p.m. being followed into his apartment elevator by a man wearing a suit, gloves, hat and mask and carrying a briefcase. When the elevator arrives at the seventh floor, which opened right into Saleh's apartment, he falls immediately, the apparent result of an attack. Saleh's body was found Tuesday afternoon by his sister who was concerned after she had not heard from him for a day. She can be seen in surveillance footage entering the building, but the suspected killer is not seen leaving, leading law enforcement to believe she may have interrupted the act of dismembering, police sources said. There is a second way out of the apartment, through a service entrance, according to the sources. Saleh's torso was detached from his head and limbs, which were found nearby in several large bags, sources said. An electric saw was also recovered, still plugged into an electrical outlet, according to law enforcement sources. His dog was found alive in the apartment.

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I got it in my head that I should move an old app off an old server onto my newest server using the modern ability of PagePark to run apps from domain folders. 2.0 days later, I think I have it running.

One of the ideas of the new PP stuff is to remove the server dependencies from Node apps, so you can just move them around where ever you like. Ideally there would be no concept of a server, just apps running in the cloud somewhere. I know there are lots of things like this, don't send me links (we need an acronym for that).

pocalyp.se a URL-shortener I wrote in 2015 that makes it possible to categorize links. I hooked it up to Radio3, and I could say this is about Bernie or Snow or Doc and it would create a URL like this:

• http://bernie.pocalyp.se/3
• http://scalia.pocalyp.se/4
• http://doc.pocalyp.se/0

Another feature, you can get all the links on a topic, in JSON.

• http://scalia.pocalyp.se/
• http://dave.pocalyp.se/

For debugging I created an HTML page that has all the links in the database.

What became of this project? The same thing that happens to all attempts to categorize things. It was too much to do in the hectic pace of being an internet busybody.

According to ABC News, 33-year-old tech entrepreneur Fahim Saleh was discovered decapitated and dismembered in his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday. The death was deemed a homicide and no arrested have been made as of yet. From the report: Saleh co-founded Pathao, a ride-share app that's popular in Bangledash. More recently, he was the CEO of Gokada, a motorcycle ride-sharing and delivery company based Nigeria, which has faced financial setbacks and recently laid off most of its staff. According to surveillance video from Monday, Saleh was seen around 1:40 p.m. being followed into his apartment elevator by a man wearing a suit, gloves, hat and mask and carrying a briefcase. When the elevator arrives at the seventh floor, which opened right into Saleh's apartment, he falls immediately, the apparent result of an attack. Saleh's body was found Tuesday afternoon by his sister who was concerned after she had not heard from him for a day. She can be seen in surveillance footage entering the building, but the suspected killer is not seen leaving, leading law enforcement to believe she may have interrupted the act of dismembering, police sources said. There is a second way out of the apartment, through a service entrance, according to the sources. Saleh's torso was detached from his head and limbs, which were found nearby in several large bags, sources said. An electric saw was also recovered, still plugged into an electrical outlet, according to law enforcement sources. His dog was found alive in the apartment.

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The virus is making us smarter. We can't get out of it until we become experts. At least as virus-savvy as we are about the weather. If you can prepare for a tornado, that's not unlike the virus. Except it's always virus season, everywhere. That's why I say journalism will fix itself. We can't get back to work until we develop information flows we all trust. That's why I'm always banging on the Fauci drum. As long as he's muzzled by the government, we can't get out of this mess. I wonder if he sees this. But you and I should see it. If you're smart enough to read this blog you're smart enough to understand this simple idea. The virus makes us smarter. The faster we get smarter, the less the damage. That's where our power is. There's no time for bullshit and we need all hands on deck.

Apple won its court fight over a record 13 billion-euro ($14.9 billion) Irish tax bill in a crushing blow to European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestagerâ(TM)s crackdown on preferential fiscal deals for companies. From a report: The judgment by the EU's lower court on Wednesday vindicates Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook's challenge against a decision he labeled as "political crap." While the EU General Court's ruling can still be appealed, judges delivered a stinging attack on the European Commission for failing to show "to the requisite legal standard" that Ireland's tax deal broke state-aid law by giving Apple an unfair advantage. "The commission's intent seemed to be a political one: to punish Apple for its overall tax planning, rather than to reach a result that accorded with the legal or economic position," Dan Neidle, a tax lawyer with Clifford Chance said in a statement. "The court has, quite rightly, followed the law and not any wider political objectives."

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Mike Pence: "We don't want CDC guidance to be a reason why people don't reopen their schools." This is a crime against humanity. Not a trivial one. If we were doing this to another country's children and teachers, we'd be out in the streets protesting, screaming at the top of our lungs. But we seem to not see that we are a cause worth fighting for too.

Google has become the latest high-profile firm to back India's Reliance Jio Platforms. The search giant is investing $4.5 billion for a 7.73% stake in the top Indian telecom network, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Wednesday. From a report: The investment today from Google is one of the rare instances where the Android-maker has joined its global rival Facebook in backing a firm. Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms, which has amassed over 400 million subscribers in less than four years of its existence, in April this year for a 9.99% stake in it. Facebook is the largest minority stakeholder in Jio Platforms. Jio Platforms, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries (India's most valued firm) has raised about $20.2 billion in the past four months from 13 investors by selling about 33% stake in the firm. (For some context, the entire Indian startup ecosystem raised $14.5 billion last year.) Google's new investment gives Jio Platforms an equity valuation of $58 billion -- the same valuation implied by Facebook. Other investors including General Atlantic, Silver Lake, Qualcomm, Intel, and Vista have paid a 12.5% premium for their stake in Jio Platforms. As part of Wednesday's strategic announcement, Google and Reliance Jio Platforms will work on a customized-version of Android operating system to develop low-cost, entry-level smartphones to serve the next hundreds of millions of users, said Ambani. These phones will support Google Play and future wireless standard 5G, he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Central Intelligence Agency has conducted a series of covert cyber operations against Iran and other targets since winning a secret victory in 2018 when President Trump signed what amounts to a sweeping authorization for such activities, according to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter. From a report: The secret authorization, known as a presidential finding, gives the spy agency more freedom in both the kinds of operations it conducts and who it targets, undoing many restrictions that had been in place under prior administrations. The finding allows the CIA to more easily authorize its own covert cyber operations, rather than requiring the agency to get approval from the White House. Unlike previous presidential findings that have focused on a specific foreign policy objective or outcome â" such as preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power â" this directive, driven by the National Security Council and crafted by the CIA, focuses more broadly on a capability: covert action in cyberspace. The âoevery aggressiveâ finding âoegave the agency very specific authorities to really take the fight offensively to a handful of adversarial countries,â said a former U.S. government official. These countries include Russia, China, Iran and North Korea â" which are mentioned directly in the document â" but the finding potentially applies to others as well, according to another former official. âoeThe White House wanted a vehicle to strike back,â said the second former official. âoeAnd this was the way to do it.â

Read more of this story at Slashdot.