An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The government has interpreted a high-profile provision of the Patriot Act as empowering F.B.I. national security investigators to collect logs showing who has visited particular web pages, documents show. But the government stops short of using that law to collect the keywords people submit to internet search engines because it considers such terms to be content that requires a warrant to gather, according to letters produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The disclosures come at a time when Congress is struggling with new proposals to limit the law, known as Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The debate ran aground in the spring amid erratic messages from President Trump, but is expected to resume after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes the oath of office in January. In May, 59 senators voted to bar the use of Section 215 to collect internet search terms or web browsing activity, but negotiations broke down in the House. During that period, Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and one of the sponsors of the proposal ban, wrote to the director of national intelligence seeking clarity about any such use. Six months later, the Trump administration finally replied -- initially, it turned out, in a misleading way. In a Nov. 6 letter to Mr. Wyden, John Ratcliffe, the intelligence director, wrote that Section 215 was not used to gather internet search terms, and that none of the 61 orders issued last year under that law by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court involved collection of "web browsing" records. Mr. Wyden's office provided that letter to The New York Times, arguing that it meant Mr. Wyden's proposal in May -- which he sponsored with Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana -- could be enacted into law without any operational costs. But The Times pressed Mr. Ratcliffe's office and the F.B.I. to clarify whether it was defining "web browsing" activity to encompass logging all visitors to a particular website, in addition to a particular person's browsing among different sites. The next day, the Justice Department sent a clarification to Mr. Ratcliffe's office, according to a follow-up letter he sent to Mr. Wyden on Nov. 25. In fact, "one of those 61 orders resulted in the production of information that could be characterized as information regarding browsing," Mr. Ratcliffe wrote in the second letter. Specifically, one order had approved collection of logs revealing which computers "in a specified foreign country" had visited "a single, identified U.S. web page." Mr. Ratcliffe expressed regret "that this additional information was not included in my earlier letter" to the senator, and suggested his staff might take further "corrective action." In a statement, Mr. Wyden said the letters raise "all kinds of new questions, including whether, in this particular case, the government has taken steps to avoid collecting Americans' web browsing information." "More generally," Mr. Wyden continued, "the D.N.I. has provided no guarantee that the government wouldn't use the Patriot Act to intentionally collect Americans' web browsing information in the future, which is why Congress must pass the warrant requirement that has already received support from a bipartisan majority in the Senate."

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YouTube is taking new steps to weed out bullying, hate speech and other kinds of nasty comments. From a report: The company introduced a new feature that will remind users to "keep comments respectful," when its automated systems detect a comment may be offensive. The change is rolling out now on Android, and will eventually move to other platforms, though it's not clear when. The feature is similar to one recently implemented by Instagram. Before a comment is posted, a pop-up will appear with a reminder to "keep comments respectful." The user will then be able to edit the comment or post it anyway. The company notes that seeing the reminder doesn't necessarily mean a comment has violated its rules or that it will be removed. The update is part of a larger effort by YouTube to reduce hate speech and make its platform more equitable for all its creators. In addition to the new pop-ups, it will also test a new feature for YouTube Studio that automatically filters out "potentially inappropriate and hurtful comments" to make it easier for video creators to avoid seeing them.

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Residents of Shenzhen saw truly driverless cars on the road today. From a report: AutoX, a four-year-old startup backed by Alibaba, MediaTek and Shanghai Motors, deployed a fleet of 25 unmanned vehicles in downtown Shenzhen, marking the first time any autonomous driving car in China tests on public roads without safety drivers or remote operators. The cars, meant as robotaxis, are not yet open to the public, an AutoX spokesperson told TechCrunch. The milestone came just five months after AutoX landed a permit from California to start driverless tests, following in the footsteps of Waymo and Nuro. It also indicates that China wants to bring its smart driving industry on par with the U.S. Cities from Shenzhen to Shanghai are competing to attract autonomous driving upstarts by clearing regulatory hurdles, touting subsidies and putting up 5G infrastructure. As a result, each city ends up with its own poster child in the space: AutoX and Deeproute.ai in Shenzhen, Pony.ai and WeRide in Guangzhou, Momenta in Suzhou and Baidu's Apollo fleet in Beijing, to name a few. The autonomous driving companies, in turn, work closely with traditional carmakers to make their vehicles smarter and more suitable for future transportation.

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The Trump administration has sued Facebook, accusing the social-media company of illegally reserving high-paying jobs for immigrant workers it was sponsoring for permanent residence, rather than searching adequately for available U.S. workers who could fill the positions. From a report: In a 17-page complaint filed Thursday, the Justice Department's civil-rights division said Facebook inadequately advertised at least 2,600 positions between 2018 and 2019 that were filled by immigrants on H-1B high-skill visas when the company was applying to sponsor those workers for permanent residency, known as green cards. Companies sponsoring workers for employment-based green cards are required to show as part of the federal application process that they couldn't find any qualified American workers to fill the job. The suit said Facebook didn't advertise the reserved positions on its website and required candidates to mail in their applications rather than accepting them online. "And even when U.S. workers do apply, Facebook will not consider them for the advertised positions," the suit alleges. "Simply put, Facebook reserves these positions for temporary visa holders."

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PC maker powerhouse Dell announced today a flurry of new enterprise security solutions for the company's line of enterprise products. From a report: The new services can be grouped into two categories, with (1) new solutions meant to protect the supply chain of Dell products while in transit to their customers and (2) new features meant to improve the security of Dell products while in use. While Dell has previously invested in securing its customers' supply chains, the company has announced today three new services. The first is named SafeSupply Chain Tamper Evident Services and, as its name implies, involves Dell adding anti-tampering seals to its devices, transport boxes, and even entire pallets before they leave Dell factories. The anti-tampering seals will allow buyers of Dell equipment to determine if any intermediary agents or transporters have opened boxes or devices to alter physical components. The second supply chain security offering, named the Dell SafeSupply Chain Data Sanitization Services, is meant for tampering made at the storage level.

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When Warner Bros. announced that "Wonder Woman 1984" would land on the streaming service HBO Max on Christmas, the same time it debuts in theaters, many expected it to be an isolated case in response to an unprecedented pandemic. From a report: Instead, the studio will deploy a similar release strategy for the next twelve months. In a surprising break from industry standards, Warner Bros.' entire 2021 slate -- a list of films that includes "The Matrix 4," Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" remake, Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical adaptation of "In the Heights," Sopranos prequel "The Many Saints of Newark," and "The Suicide Squad" -- will debut both on HBO Max and in theaters on their respective release dates. The shocking move to simultaneously release movies day-and-date underscores the crisis facing movie theaters and the rising importance of streaming services in the wake of a global health crisis that's decimated the film exhibition community.

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AstraZeneca and Oxford University have given conflicting accounts of how they came upon the most effective dosing pattern for their COVID-19 vaccine, a rare instance of public dissension between major institutions collaborating on a pivotal project. From a report: The discrepancy, reported for the first time by Reuters, centres on the regimen administered to a smaller group of volunteers in the late-stage trials, of half a dose followed by a full dose. This diverged from the original plan of two full doses, given to the majority of participants. The half-dose pattern was found to be 90% effective, versus the 62% success rate of the two-full-dose main study, based on interim data. AstraZeneca's research chief told Reuters 10 days ago, when interim trial data was released, the half-dose was given inadvertently as a first shot to some trial participants, and emerged as a stroke of fortune -- "serendipity" -- that scientists expertly harnessed. This narrative was refuted by a leading Oxford University scientist, however, who told Reuters on Monday that the half-dose shot was given deliberately after thorough consultations. Uncertainty over how the dosing regimen came about raises questions about the robustness of the data, according to some experts who said it risked slowing down the process of gaining regulatory approval for the shot and denting public confidence. "These differing accounts are worrying," Eleanor Riley, a professor of immunology and infectious disease at the University of Edinburgh, told Reuters. "Trust is at a premium when it comes to vaccines and we must not do anything that might in any way undermine it."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Dec. 2 was the 25th anniversary of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint project from NASA and the European Space Agency. To celebrate, the agencies released a dramatic, nearly 50-minute-long video showing the sun blasting out solar material from 1998 through 2020. The SOHO spacecraft constantly stares at the sun, recording its every whim. It's spectacular and mesmerizing. "What becomes clear as the sun turns and years pass and background stars whirl by, is how constant the stream of material is that is blasted in all directions -- the solar wind," ESA said in a statement on Wednesday. "This constant wind is interrupted only by huge explosions that fling bows of material at vast speeds, filling the solar system with ionized material and solar radiation."

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The world's most productive astronomical facility releases its third big tranche of sky data.

The robotic probe lifts off the lunar surface carrying samples of rock and dust to send to Earth.

The personal information of more than 243 million Brazilians, including alive and deceased, has been exposed online after web developers left the password for a crucial government database inside the source code of an official Brazilian Ministry of Health's website for at least six months. From a report: The security snafu was discovered by reporters from Brazilian newspaper Estadao, the same newspaper that last week discovered that a Sao Paolo hospital leaked personal and health information for more than 16 million Brazilian COVID-19 patients after an employee uploaded a spreadsheet with usernames, passwords, and access keys to sensitive government systems on GitHub. Estadao reporters said they were inspired by a report filed in June by Brazilian NGO Open Knowledge Brasil (OKBR), which, at the time, reported that a similar government website also left exposed login information for another government database in the site's source code. Since a website's source code can be accessed and reviewed by anyone pressing F12 inside their browser, Estadao reporters searched for similar issues in other government sites.

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With vaccines against Covid-19 on the verge of being rolled out around the world, Facebook said it will start removing false claims about the immunizations that have been debunked by public health experts. From a report: The move announced Thursday adds to Facebook's policy of taking down misinformation about the deadly virus that could lead to imminent physical harm. The type of posts that could be removed on Facebook or Instagram include false claims about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects of the vaccine, Facebook said. These could include claims that the vaccines contain microchips or anything else not on the official ingredient list. In October, Facebook said it would ban ads that discourage people from getting vaccines in general, not just for Covid.

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Our collective approach to the pandemic is very weird.

GitHub has released its annual Octoverse report, revealing trends in one of the largest developer communities on the planet, including a spike in open source project activity following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. VentureBeat: JavaScript continues to be the most popular programming language on GitHub, while Python is now the second most popular, followed by Java and the fast-growing TypeScript community. Maintained by GitHub owner Microsoft, TypeScript has climbed from seventh place in 2018 and 2019 to fourth overall this year. PHP and Ruby, languages that ranked among the most popular five years ago, continued to decline in popularity.

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