Elon Musk is getting in on the NFT gold rush by selling a new electronic music track he's apparently produced as an NFT. The Verge reports: Yes, you've heard that right -- it's a song about non-fungible tokens, which Musk appears to have minted (or plans to mint) on the blockchain. Musk did not include a link to the NFT, so it's not clear if it's already live or if Musk plans to initiate the sale at a later date. It's also not clear on which platform Musk intends to sell the NFT. We also don't know if the song has a name, but we have some clues. The looping video attached to the song Musk posted to Twitter on Monday displays the words "Vanity Trophy" orbiting around a golden orb affixed to the top of a literal trophy reading "HODL," short for the phase "hold on for dear life." [...] At various points in the short video, the words along the trophy shift from "computers" to "never sell" while a female vocalist sings lyrics over top like "NFT for your vanity" and "computers never sleep." Did I mention that the trophy also has little gold dogs, or "doges" if you will, rotating around it, too? The techno song drop is appropriate considering Musk named himself the "technoking" of Tesla in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Meanwhile, chief financial officer Zach Kirkhorn's new position is "Master of Coin." Both Elon and Zach "will also maintain their respective positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer," the filing concludes.

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Tinder and Match have announced a new partnership with Garbo, a non-profit, female-founded background check platform. In theory, it should allow Tinder (and Match Group's other sites) to ping Garbo's database and proactively show users when it finds something they might want to be aware of. Engadget reports: If you're not familiar with Garbo, it was founded by Kathryn Kosmides, a "survivor of gender-based violence" who wanted to make it easier to find information about people you may connect with online. Garbo's platform aggregates numerous data sources to provide details on an individual, including "arrests, convictions, restraining orders, harassment, and other violent crimes." The organization's site says that often times, you don't even need a last time to find some details on an individual -- a first name and phone number will work. As part of the deal, Garbo's platform will be available to people using Match Group apps, starting with Tinder later this year. [...] Garbo cites making ridesharing services safer as another core initiative for the non-profit in addition to working with dating services, so it wouldn't surprise us to see a similar partnership appear between Garbo and companies like Uber or Lyft -- but for now, it's starting with Tinder.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Joseph Cox: I didn't expect it to be that quick. While I was on a Google Hangouts call with a colleague, the hacker sent me screenshots of my Bumble and Postmates accounts, which he had broken into. Then he showed he had received texts that were meant for me that he had intercepted. Later he took over my WhatsApp account, too, and texted a friend pretending to be me. Looking down at my phone, there was no sign it had been hacked. I still had reception; the phone said I was still connected to the T-Mobile network. Nothing was unusual there. But the hacker had swiftly, stealthily, and largely effortlessly redirected my text messages to themselves. And all for just $16. I hadn't been SIM swapped, where hackers trick or bribe telecom employees to port a target's phone number to their own SIM card. Instead, the hacker used a service by a company called Sakari, which helps businesses do SMS marketing and mass messaging, to reroute my messages to him. This overlooked attack vector shows not only how unregulated commercial SMS tools are but also how there are gaping holes in our telecommunications infrastructure, with a hacker sometimes just having to pinky swear they have the consent of the target. "I used a prepaid card to buy their $16 per month plan and then after that was done it let me steal numbers just by filling out LOA info with fake info," said Lucky225, the pseudonymous hacker who carried out the attack, referring to a Letter of Authorization, a document saying that the signer has authority to switch telephone numbers. In a statement to Motherboard, Senator Ron Wyden said: "Itâ(TM)s not hard to see the enormous threat to safety and security this kind of attack poses. The FCC must use its authority to force phone companies to secure their networks from hackers. Former Chairman Paiâ(TM)s approach of industry self-regulation clearly failed."

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Thelasko writes: Microsoft is reporting an outage of Office 365, including Microsoft Teams. On its status page, Microsoft adds: Users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft services. User impact: Users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365 services, including the Service Health Dashboard. More info: Any service that leverages Azure Active Directory (AAD) may be affected. This includes but is not limited to Microsoft Teams, Forms, Exchange Online, Intune and Yammer. Current status: We've identified the underlying cause of the problem and are taking steps to mitigate impact. We'll provide an updated ETA on resolution as soon as one is available. Scope of impact: This issue could affect any user.

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Too many young people around the world are excluded from accessing the web, and getting them online should be a priority for the post-Covid era, Tim Berners-Lee has said. From a report: In a letter published to mark the 32nd birthday of the web, its founder says the opportunity "to reimagine our world and create something better" in the aftermath of Covid-19 must be channelled to getting internet access to the third of people aged between 15 and 24 who are offline. "The influence of young people is felt across their communities and online networks," Berners-Lee writes. "But today we're seeing just a fraction of what's possible. Because while we talk about a generation of 'digital natives,' far too many young people remain excluded and unable to use the web to share their talents and ideas. "A third of young people have no internet access at all. Many more lack the data, devices and reliable connection they need to make the most of the web. In fact, only the top third of under-25s have a home internet connection, according to Unicef, leaving 2.2 billion young people without the stable access they need to learn online, which has helped so many others continue their education during the pandemic." Even though young people are more likely than the typical global citizen to have internet access -- roughly half the world is online, but the figure rises to 70% of people aged between 15 and 25 -- Berners-Lee argues that aiming to connect every young person in the world to the web would reap dividends. He also says doing so would be relatively cheap compared with the cost of many government programmes launched over the last 12 months. He estimates that an investment of $428bn over the next decade would provide everyone with a quality broadband connection.

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A jet fuel made from food waste has the potential to reduce emissions from flying, scientists say.

Amazon is expanding an existing program that gamifies warehouse work to encourage its fulfillment center employees to improve their efficiency and compete against others for digital rewards like virtual pets, according to a new report from The Information. From a report: The program is called FC Games, and it includes as many as six arcade-style mini-games that can be played only by completing warehouse tasks in the workplace. It's been known since at least 2019 that Amazon uses gamification in the form of workstation games to try to incentivize employees to improve productivity, but The Information reports that Amazon is now expanding those methods to warehouses in at least 20 states throughout the country. Many of the games tend to be simple virtual representations of how fast the worker is completing a task. One, called MissionRacer, moves a car around a track while a picking employee sorts products into appropriate boxes, as reported by The Washington Post at the time. "Employees have told us they enjoy having the option to join in these workstation games, and we're excited to be taking their feedback and expanding the program to even more buildings throughout our network," Kent Hollenbeck, an Amazon spokesperson, tells The Information. "Even with this expansion, the program remains completely optional for employees; they can switch in or out of different games depending on their preference, can play anonymously, or not play at all -- the choice is theirs."

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Germany on Monday halted use of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, the Health Ministry announced in a statement, with Italy, France and Spain following suit later in the day. Several other EU countries have stopped use of the vaccine because of the possibility of blood clots. From a report: The Health Ministry announced that use of the vaccine was "suspended as a precaution" on the basis of advice from the national health regulator, the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI). According to the Health Ministry, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will decide "whether and how the new information will affect the authorization of the vaccine" pending an investigation. "After new reports of thrombroses of the cerebral veins in connection with the vaccination in Germany and Europe, the PEI considers further investigations to be necessary," the Health Ministry announced. German Health Minister Jens Spahn said "the decision is a professional, not political one," following advice from the PEI. Spahn said the risk of blood clots from the AstraZeneca jab is low, but could not be ruled out. "The most important thing for confidence is transparency," Spahn said during a briefing.

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MojoKid writes: AMD announced new additions to its EPYC server processor lineup today, codenamed Milan. The company's EPYC 7003 series brings with it significantly improved IPC and per-core performance, better multi-core scaling, and more flexible memory configuration options, in a package that's socket compatible with its previous-gen CPUs. Like the current AMD Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors, new EPYC 7003 CPUs leverage AMD's new Zen 3 microarchitecture. Unlike its desktop parts, however, EPYC 7003 server processors use much larger packaging and feature up to CPU nine chiplets (up to eight 7nm CPU dies and a 12nm IO die), with up to 64 physical cores and 128 threads per socket. As things stand today, Intel doesn't currently have any Xeon processors that can match AMD in terms of single-socket core density. As such, AMD's EPYC 7003 series should consistently offer better performance in many workloads. Pricing for these new big iron processors ranges from $913 or the 16-core 7313P, and up to $7,890 for the powerful EPYC 7763, which AMD is calling "the world's highest-performing server processor." Though nearly $8K is not cheap, AMD appears to be continuing its aggressive price strategy with the EPYC 7003 series, relative to Intel's Xeon Scalable processors. The company also announced a who's who of data center and cloud service OEMs supporting the new platform, including AWS, Azure, Dell Technologies, HPE, Cisco, Google Cloud, Oracle and others.

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Significant storms have been forming earlier than usual in recent years.

Apple says its App Store now supports more than 330,000 jobs in the U.K., a 10% increase over the past year, despite the pressures of the global health crisis on the nation's economy. From a report: According to Apple, 2020 was a "breakthrough year" for the iOS app economy, with developers in the U.K. generating more than $5 billion in total earnings, which represents 22% in growth compared to the previous year. The company says a similar trend was reflected in Europe, where the iOS app economy has grown to support 1.7 million jobs -- a 7% percent increase since 2019. Apple published similar press releases in Germany and France, claiming that the App Store supports over a quarter of a million jobs in each of those two countries.

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General Motors said on Monday that due to the global semiconductor chip shortage the U.S. automaker is building certain 2021 light-duty full-size pickup trucks without a fuel management module, hurting those vehicles' fuel economy performance. From a report: The lack of the active fuel management/dynamic fuel management module means affected models, equipped with the 5.3-liter EcoTec3 V8 engine with both six-speed and eight-speed automatic transmission, will have lower fuel economy by one mile per gallon, spokeswoman Michelle Malcho said. Malcho emphasized all trucks are still being built, something GM has repeatedly stressed it would try to protect as pickups are among GM's most profitable models. She declined to say the volume of vehicles affected. "By taking this measure, we are better able to meet the strong customer and dealer demand for our full-size trucks as the industry continues to rebound and strengthen," Malcho wrote in an email. The change runs through the 2021 model year, which typically ends in late summer or early fall, she said.

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A company says "I'm sorry you're inconvenienced." Maybe I'm not inconvenienced. Perhaps I'm devastated. Or bored. Irritated. Puzzled. Bewildered. Suicidal. Homicidal. Wistful.

Here's an idea. A feed that replays the then-new podcast-o-sphere, starting in June 2004. In June 2021.

Adobe just dropped its latest software updates via the Creative Cloud and among those updates is a new feature in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) called "Super Resolution." You can mark this day down as a major shift in the photo industry, writes PetaPixel. From the report: I have seen a bit of reporting out there on this topic from the likes of PetaPixel and Fstoppers, but other than that the ramifications of this new feature in ACR have not been widely promoted from what I can see. The new Super Resolution feature in ACR essentially upsizes the image by a factor of four using machine learning, i.e. Artificial Intelligence (AI). The PetaPixel article on this new feature quoted Eric Chan from Adobe: Super Resolution builds on a technology Adobe launched two years ago called Enhance Details, which uses machine learning to interpolate RAW files with a high degree of fidelity, which resulted in images with crisp details and fewer artifacts. The term 'Super Resolution' refers to the process of improving the quality of a photo by boosting its apparent resolution," Chan explains. "Enlarging a photo often produces blurry details, but Super Resolution has an ace up its sleeve: an advanced machine learning model trained on millions of photos. Backed by this vast training set, Super Resolution can intelligently enlarge photos while maintaining clean edges and preserving important details." What does this mean practically? Well, I immediately tested this out and was pretty shocked by the results. Though it might be hard to make out in the screenshot below, I took the surfing image shown below, which was captured a decade ago with a Nikon D700 -- a 12MP camera -- and ran the Super Resolution tool on it and the end result is a 48.2MP image that looks to be every bit as sharp (if not sharper) than the original image file. This means that I can now print that old 12MP image at significantly larger sizes than I ever could before. What this also means is that anyone with a lower resolution camera, i.e. the current crop of 24MP cameras, can now output huge image files for prints or any other usage that requires a higher resolution image file. In the three or four images I have run through this new feature in Photoshop I have found the results to be astoundingly good.

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