This week the New York Times published their online investigation into the seamy world of the professional slander industry. (Alternate URL.) At first glance, the websites appear amateurish. They have names like BadGirlReports.date, BustedCheaters.com and WorstHomeWrecker.com. Photos are badly cropped. Grammar and spelling are afterthoughts. They are clunky and text-heavy, as if they're intended to be read by machines, not humans. But do not underestimate their power... One woman in Ohio was the subject of so many negative posts that Bing declared in bold at the top of her search results that she "is a liar and a cheater" — the same way it states that Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States. For roughly 500 of the 6,000 people we searched for, Google suggested adding the phrase "cheater" to a search of their names. The unverified claims are on obscure, ridiculous-looking sites, but search engines give them a veneer of credibility. Posts from Cheaterboard.com appear in Google results alongside Facebook pages and LinkedIn profiles.... That would be bad enough for people whose reputations have been savaged. But the problem is all the worse because it's so hard to fix. And that is largely because of the secret, symbiotic relationship between those facilitating slander and those getting paid to remove it. Who, exactly? The Times spoke to: Cyrus Sullivan, the Portland-based owner of one site who also runs a reputation-management service "to help people get 'undesirable information' about themselves removed from their search engine results. The 'gold package' cost $699.99. For those customers, Mr. Sullivan would alter the computer code underlying the offending posts, instructing search engines to ignore them...." 247Removal's owner Heidi Glosser, who "charges $750 or more per post removal, which adds up to thousands of dollars for most of her clients. To get posts removed, she said, she often pays an 'administrative fee' to the gripe site's webmaster. We asked her whether this was extortion. 'I can't really give you a direct answer,' she said." She appeared to have links to... Web developer Vikram Parmar, who seemed to be running several sites that produced slander while also simultaneously running sites that made money by removing that slander. But finally, the Times reminded their readers that "in certain circumstances, Google will remove harmful content from individuals' search results, including links to 'sites with exploitative removal practices.' If a site charges to remove posts, you can ask Google not to list it. "Google didn't advertise this policy widely, and few victims of online slander seem aware that it's an option. That's in part because when you Google ways to clean up your search results, Google's solution is buried under ads for reputation-management services..."

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An anonymous reader quotes Inside.com's developer newsletter: GitHub is blocking Google's new third-party cookie tracking alternative, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), across all of GitHub Pages. Those GitHub Pages served from the github.io domain will now come with a Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=() header set, although Pages sites with custom domains will not. Several big names have also spoken out against the new alternative and implemented similar moves. WordPress is proposing automatically blocking FLoC by default on its websites, dubbing it a security risk. However, WordPress says it may add a setting that will enable admins to control whether FLoC is allowed. Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi have also issued similar moves... One web developer recently published a guide showing others how to opt their site out of Google's FLoC Network. Developer Paramdeo Singh shows you how to ensure your web server doesn't participate in the network by adding a custom HTTP response header to web and proxy server configurations.

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Analyst firm SlashData surveyed over 19,000 respondents from 155 countries for its "State of the Developer Nation" survey — and now estimates that there's 24.3 million active developers worldwide. TechRadar reports: The report pegs JavaScript as the most popular language that, together with variants including TypeScript and CoffeeScript, is used by almost 14 million developers around the world. Based on SlashData's observations over the past several years, more than 4.5 million JavaScript developers have joined the ranks between Q4 2017 and Q1 2021. This is the highest growth in terms of absolute numbers across all programming languages... Next up is Python with just over 10 million users, followed by Java with 9.4 million, and C/C++ with 7.3 million. The report notes that Python added 1.6 million new developers in the past year, recording a growth rate of 20%. From ZDNet: SlashData estimates the next three largest developer communities are using C/C++ (7.3 million), Microsoft's C# (6.5 million), and PHP (6.3 million). Other large groups of developers are fans of Kotlin, Swift, Go, Ruby, Objective C, Rust and Lua... SlashData, however, notes that Rust and Lua were the two fastest growing programming language communities in the past 12 months, albeit from a lower base than Python. And Visual Studio magazine couldn't resist emphasizing that C# "has ticked up a notch in popularity, overtaking PHP for No. 5 on that ranking..." "C# lost three places in the rankings of language communities between Q3 2019 and Q3 2020, but it regained its lead over PHP in the past six months after adding half a million developers," the report states... "C# is traditionally popular within the desktop developer community, but it's also the most broadly used language among AR/VR and game developers, largely due to the widespread adoption of the Unity game engine in these areas..." It was a different story one year ago, when the 18th edition of the report said: "C# lost about 1M developers during 2019... [I]t seems to be losing its edge in desktop development — possibly due to the emergence of cross-platform tools based on web technologies." The language might see more desktop development inroads as new initiatives from Microsoft such as Blazor Desktop (one of those "cross-platform tools based on web technologies") and .NET MAUI provide a wide array of desktop approaches.

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Four astronauts in a SpaceX Dragon capsule successfully splashed down into the Gulf of Mexico this morning at 2:57 a.m. ET — returning from the International Space Station in the first U.S. crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot in 1968. Phys.org reports: It was an express trip home, lasting just 6 1/2 hours... "We welcome you back to planet Earth and thanks for flying SpaceX," SpaceX's Mission Control radioed moments after splashdown. "For those of you enrolled in our frequent flyer program, you've earned 68 million miles on this voyage...." The 167-day mission was the longest for a crew capsule launching from the U.S. The previous record of 84 days was set by NASA's final Skylab station astronauts in 1974. Saturday night's undocking left seven people at the space station, four of whom arrived a week ago via SpaceX... Once finished with their medical checks on the ship, the astronauts planned to hop on a helicopter for the short flight to shore, then catch a plane straight to Houston for a reunion with their families. "It's not very often you get to wake up on the space station and go to sleep in Houston," chief flight director Holly Ridings told reporters. The astronauts' capsule, Resilience, will head back to Cape Canaveral for refurbishment for SpaceX's first private crew mission in September... A tech billionaire has purchased the entire three-day flight, which will orbit 75 miles (120 kilometers) above the space station. He'll fly with a pair of contest winners and a physician assistant from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, his designated charity for the mission. SpaceX's next astronaut launch for NASA will follow in October.

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Friday the Free Software Foundation awarded their coveted "Respects Your Freedom" (RYF) certification to another new product: the Free Software Wireless-N Mini Router v3 (TPE-R1300) from ThinkPenguin, Inc. Just 45 products currently hold the FSF's certification "that these products meet the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy." (That is to say, they run on 100% free software, allow the installation of modified software, and are free from DRM, spyware and tracking.) The FSF writes: As with previous routers from ThinkPenguin, the Free Software Wireless-N Mini Router v3 ships with an FSF-endorsed fully free embedded GNU/Linux distribution called libreCMC. It also comes with a custom flavor of the U-Boot boot loader, assembled by Robert Call, who is the maintainer of libreCMC and a former FSF intern. The router enables users to run multiple devices on a network through a VPN service, helping to simplify the process of keeping their communications secure and private. While ThinkPenguin offers a VPN service, users are not required to purchase a subscription to their service in order to use the router, and the device comes with detailed instructions on how to use the router with a wide variety of VPN providers... "ThinkPenguin once again demonstrates a long-standing commitment to protecting the rights of their users. With the latest iteration of the Wireless-N Mini Router, users know that they'll have up to date hardware they can trust for years to come," said the FSF's licensing and compliance manager, Donald Robertson, III. Phoronix points its readers to the device's page at ThinkPenguin.com "should you be looking to build out your wireless network using the decade old 802.11n standard."

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"Chromium-based web browser Opera is all set to fully integrate with blockchain domain name provider Unstoppable Domains," reports TechRadar, "in a bid to provide millions of its users with decentralized web access." Opera users will now be able to access decentralized websites hosted via the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) using Unstoppable Domains' popular .crypto NFT addresses from the Opera browser. This will include platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows, Mac or Linux. Right now, Opera has over 320 million monthly active users across its offerings, following the addition of a crypto wallet to its browsers in 2019. Unstoppable Domains was launched in 2018 and provides domain names to users with no renewal fees. Users of Unstoppable Domains are granted full ownership and control when they claim a domain because it is minted as an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain. Domain names such as .crypto replace complex wallet addresses for payments across over 40 cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges in addition to accessing the decentralized web through Opera. Maciej Kocemba, Product Director at Opera said that the company believes in giving all people the ability to access the full web, regardless of the technology behind it. The Opera product director was further quoted by Business Insider: "We have always supported web innovation, and the decentralized web or Web3 is the natural next wave. Making Unstoppable Domains accessible in the Opera browsers means our users can try blockchain technologies for themselves. Registering your .crypto domain, which is forever yours, is a great first step into Web3," the company's product director Maciej Kocemba said. Opera is quickly becoming a leader in pushing for the adoption of Web 3.0, also often described as the decentralized web.

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Florida is on track to be the first state in America to punish social media companies that ban politicians, reports NBC News, "under a bill approved Thursday by the state's Republican-led Legislature." Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and close Trump ally who called for the bill's passage, is expected to sign the legislation into law, but the proposal appears destined to be challenged in court after a tech industry trade group called it a violation of the First Amendment speech rights of corporations... Suspensions of up to 14 days would still be allowed, and a service could remove individual posts that violate its terms of service. The state's elections commission would be empowered to fine a social media company $250,000 a day for statewide candidates and $25,000 a day for other candidates if a company's actions are found to violate the law, which also requires the companies to provide information about takedowns and apply rules consistently... Florida Republican lawmakers have cited tech companies' wide influence over speech as a reason for the increased regulation. "What this bill is about is sending a loud message to Silicon Valley that they are not the absolute arbiters of truth," state Rep. John Snyder, a Republican from the Port St. Lucie area, said Wednesday... The Florida bill may offer Republicans in other states a road map for introducing laws that could eventually force social media companies and U.S. courts to confront questions about free speech on social media, including the questions raised by Thomas. State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando area Democrat, said if Republicans want to stay on private services, they should follow the rules. "There's already a solution to deplatforming candidates on social media: Stop trafficking in conspiracy theories...." NetChoice, a trade group for internet companies, argued the bill punishes platforms for removing harmful content, and that it would make it harder to block spam. But they also argued that the freedom of speech clause in the U.S. Constitution "makes clear that government may not regulate the speech of private individuals or businesses. "This includes government action that compels speech by forcing a private social media platform to carry content that is against its policies or preferences." Slashdot reader zantafio points out the bill specifies just five major tech companies — Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon. And that the bill was also amended to specifically exempt Disney, Universal and any theme park owner that operates a search engine or information service.

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"Scientists have spotted one of the largest stellar flares ever recorded in our galaxy," reports Space.com: The jets of plasma shot outward from the sun's nearest neighbor, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. The flare, which was around 100 times more powerful than any experienced in our solar system, could change the way scientists think about solar radiation and alien life... On May 1, 2019, the team captured the mega flare, which shone for just 7 seconds and was mainly visible in the ultraviolet spectrum. "The star went from normal to 14,000 times brighter when seen in ultraviolet wavelengths over the span of a few seconds," lead author Meredith MacGregor, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a statement... The flare on Proxima Centauri was extremely powerful compared with those emitted by the sun. Unlike flares from the sun, this one also emitted different kinds of radiation. In particular, it produced a huge surge of ultraviolet light and radio waves — known as "millimeter radiation...." The new findings suggest that stellar flares given off by red dwarfs are much more violent than previously expected and could reduce the likelihood of alien life developing around them. Proxima Centauri is orbited by two explanets, one of which "is considered to be Earth-like and lies within the star's habitable zone — the distance from a star that could support the development of life, according to the researchers..." But in a statement, the leader authors now points out that Proxima Centauri's planets "are getting hit by something like this not once in a century, but at least once a day, if not several times a day."

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CNN writes: Bitcoin prices continued their rebound Saturday, rising about 6% to nearly $58,000. But the world's largest cryptocurrency has been overshadowed lately by its younger sibling, Ethereum. Ethereum, or ether for short, hit a new record high Saturday of just over $2,900. Ether prices have nearly quadrupled in 2021, soaring 290%. Bitcoin has had a great run too this year, doubling in value. The total value of all Ethereum in circulation is now about $333 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin's market value is nearly $1.1 trillion. While there are thousands of cryptocurrencies — including the Elon Musk tweet-fueled Dogecoin — Bitcoin and ether account for nearly two-thirds of the entire $2.2 trillion global crypto market... Ethereum has enjoyed an even bigger surge than Bitcoin because it is the cryptocurrency of choice for the purchases of many non-fungible tokens, or NFTs — which have taken the art and broader collectibles world by storm.

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Business Insider reports: Former Netflix vice president of IT Michael Kail was convicted by a federal jury on Friday of 28 counts of fraud and money laundering, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in a press release. Kail, who was indicted in 2018, used his position to create a "pay-to-play" scheme where he approved contracts with outside tech companies looking to do business with Netflix in exchange for taking bribes and kickbacks, according to evidence presented to the jury, the release said. Kail accepted bribes or kickbacks from nine different companies totaling more than $500,000 as well as stock options, according to the Department of Justice's press release... Netflix sued Kail after he left the company in 2014 to take a role as Yahoo's CIO, accusing him of fraud and breaching his fiduciary duties. One FBI agent says that Kail "stole the opportunity to work with an industry pioneer from honest, hardworking, Silicon Valley companies," according to the details in the Department of Justice statement: To facilitate kickback payments, the evidence at trial showed that Kail created and controlled a limited liability corporation called Unix Mercenary, LLC. Established on February 7, 2012, Unix Mercenary had no employees and no business location. Kail was the sole signatory to its bank accounts... Kail faces a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or twice his gross gain or twice the gross loss to Netflix, whichever is greater, for each count of a wire or mail fraud conviction, and ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for each count of a money laundering conviction.

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Amazon accounts for "roughly half of all online sales," while "more than half of all the stuff sold by Amazon comes from third parties," reports a business columnist for the Los Angeles Times. But is Amazon legally and financially responsible for the safety of those products? Amazon says no. A trio of state Court of Appeal justices in Los Angeles this week said otherwise. "We are persuaded that Amazon's own business practices make it a direct link in the vertical chain of distribution under California's strict liability doctrine," the justices ruled, rejecting Amazon's claim that its site is merely a platform connecting buyers and sellers... "Amazon is the retailer. They're the one selling the product," said Christopher Dolan, a San Francisco lawyer who spearheaded the case against the e-commerce behemoth. "Because of this ruling," he told me, "you can be sure Amazon is rewriting all its rules for third-party sellers, and it's doing it today..." The case began in 2015 when a California woman named Loomis gave her son a hoverboard for Christmas in 2015 — and less than a week later its lithium-ion batteries exploded while charging: In pursuing his case on Loomis' behalf, Dolan found that the Chinese manufacturer and its U.S. distributor had gone out of business, "leaving only Amazon to be held accountable for the injuries to Ms. Loomis and the damages to her home." Amazon prevailed in the original case. An L.A. judge agreed with the Seattle company that it was merely an "online advertiser" and not responsible for the third-party products it sells. The lawsuit was dismissed in March 2019. This week's appellate court decision overturns that ruling, holding Amazon accountable for the products it allows third parties to sell on its website. The appellate justices cited Amazon's "substantial ability to influence the manufacturing or distribution process through its ability to require safety certification, indemnification and insurance before it agrees to list any product...." Product liability experts told me this week's decision makes clear that online merchants are just that — merchants — and can't hide behind their connecting-the-world technology to shield them from responsibility for distributing unsafe goods.

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Scientific American has published an opinion piece by the principle investigator for a project called SPARK, launched five years ago "to harness the power of big data by engaging hundreds of thousands of individuals with autism and their family members to participate in research." The article calls autism "a remarkably heterogeneous disorder that affects more than five million Americans and has no FDA-approved treatments," arguing that the more people who participate in their research, "the deeper and richer these data sets become, catalyzing research that is expanding our knowledge of both biology and behavior to develop more precise approaches to medical and behavioral issues." SPARK is the world's largest autism research study to date with over 250,000 participants, more than 100,000 of whom have provided DNA samples through the simple act of spitting in a tube. We have generated genomic data that have been de-identified and made available to qualified researchers. SPARK has itself been able to analyze 19,000 genes to find possible connections to autism; worked with 31 of the nation's leading medical schools and autism research centers; and helped thousands of participating families enroll in nearly 100 additional autism research studies. Genetic research has taught us that what we commonly call autism is actually a spectrum of hundreds of conditions that vary widely among adults and children. Across this spectrum, individuals share core symptoms and challenges with social interaction, restricted interests and/or repetitive behaviors. We now know that genes play a central role in the causes of these "autisms," which are the result of genetic changes in combination with other causes including prenatal factors. To date, research employing data science and machine learning has identified approximately 150 genes related to autism, but suggests there may be as many as 500 or more... But in order to get answers faster and be certain of these results, SPARK and our research partners need a huge sample size: "bigger data." To ensure an accurate inventory of all the major genetic contributors, and learn if and how different genetic variants contribute to autistic behaviors, we need not only the largest but also the most diverse group of participants. The genetic, medical and behavioral data SPARK collects from people with autism and their families is rich in detail and can be leveraged by many different investigators. Access to rich data sets draws talented scientists to the field of autism science to develop new methods of finding patterns in the data, better predicting associated behavioral and medical issues, and, perhaps, identifying more effective supports and treatments... We know that big data, with each person representing their unique profile of someone impacted by autism, will lead to many of the answers we seek.

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Vice reports: The AI-powered story generator AI Dungeon has come under fire from fans recently for changes to how the development team moderates content. Notably, the player base is worried that the AI Dungeon developers will be reading their porn stories in the game. Separately, a hacker recently revealed vulnerabilities in the game that show that roughly half of the game's content is porn. AI Dungeon is a text based adventure game where, instead of playing through a scenario entirely designed by someone else, the responses to the prompts you type are generated by an AI... This week, AI Dungeon players noticed that more of their stories were being flagged by the content moderation system, and flagged more frequently. Latitude, the developers of AI Dungeon, released a blog post explaining that it had implemented a new algorithm for content moderation specifically to look for content that involves "sexual content involving minors... We did not communicate this test to the Community in advance, which created an environment where users and other members of our larger community, including platform moderators, were caught off guard... Latitude reviews content flagged by the model for the purposes of improving the model, to enforce our policies, and to comply with law." Latitude later clarified in its Discord at what point a human moderator would read private stories on AI Dungeon. It said that if a story appears to be incorrectly flagged, human moderators would stop reading the inputs, but that if a story appeared to be correctly flagged then they "may look at the user's other stories for signs that the user may be using AI Dungeon for prohibited purposes." Latitude CEO Nick Walton told Motherboard that human moderators only look at stories in the "very few cases" that they violate the terms of service... All of this has been compounded by the fact that a security researcher named AetherDevSecOpsjust published a lengthy report on security issues with AI Dungeon on GitHub, which included one that allowed them to look at all the user input data stored in AI Dungeon. About a solid third of stories on AI Dungeon are sexually explicit, and about half are marked as NSFW, AetherDevSecOpsjust estimated.

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"Despite early claims by #Tesla #ElonMusk, Autopilot WAS engaged in tragic crash in The Woodlands," tweeted U.S. Congressman Kevin Brady on Wednesday. (Adding "We need answers.") But maybe it depends on how you define Autopilot. CNN reports: Tesla said Monday that one of Autopilot's features was active during the April 17 crash that killed two men in Spring, Texas.... Lars Moravy, Tesla's vice president of vehicle engineering, said on the company's earnings call Monday that Tesla's adaptive cruise control was engaged and accelerated to 30 mph before the car crashed. Autopilot is a suite of driver assistance features, including traffic-aware cruise control and Autosteer, according to Tesla's website... The North American owner's manuals for the Model 3, Model S and Model X, all describe traffic-aware cruise control as an Autopilot feature. Tesla's revelation may be at odds with the initial description of the crash from its CEO Elon Musk, who said two days after the crash that "data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled." Alternately, Forbes suggests there may just be some confusion, noting that earnings call included descriptions of tests Tesla performed on one of their own cars after the accident. So when they said adaptive cruise control "only accelerated the car to 30mph [over] the distance before the car crashed," they could just have been referring to their own experiments. (Tesla also points out adaptive cruise control only engages when the driver is buckled — and disengages slowly if they're unbuckled — and after the Texas crash all seat belts were unbuckled.) Why so much confusion? Part of the problem may be, as CNN points out, that Tesla "generally does not engage with the professional news media." But The Drive shares another theory about the crash: A relative of the deceased told a local news station that the owner allegedly "may have hopped in the back seat after backing the car out of the driveway." Moments later, the car crashed when it failed to negotiate a turn at high speed. CNN adds: Bryan Reimer, the associate director of the New England University Transportation Center at MIT, who studies driver assistance systems like Autopilot, said one of the plausible explanations for the crash is that the driver was confused and thought they had activated Autosteer, when only traffic-aware cruise control had been turned on. "The general understanding of Autopilot is that it's one feature, but in reality it is two things bolted together," said Reimer, referring to traffic-aware cruise control and Autosteer. But according to the Washington Post, Tesla also disputes that theory: Tesla executives on Monday claimed a driver was behind the wheel at the time of a fatal crash that killed two in suburban Houston this month, contradicting local authorities who have previously said they were certain no one was in that seat. Tesla made the statement on its earnings call Monday... Lars Moravy, the company's vice president of vehicle engineering, said the steering wheel was "deformed," indicating a driver's presence at the time of the crash... Mark Herman, constable for Harris County Precinct 4, told the station KHOU that police were "100 percent certain that no one was in the driver's seat."

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"There are simply too many points of uncertainty for us to move forward with confidence right now," explains a FAQ addressing this year's cancellation for the annual Burning Man festival. "The physical, psychic, and emotional impacts of this pandemic are real and the recovery from this experience will happen at different rates of speed," organizers said in an announcement. "This is the time to gather with our friends, crews, families and communities..." They also argued that in an abstract sense, "Burning Man is happening right NOW, all around you," urging people to create experiences, opportunities and connection at the local level. (Their suggestions include planning to join a mass "Burn Night" livestreaming event on September 4, or preparing for "Virtual Burning Man" from August 21 to September 5, 2021.) Last year's virtual event drew 165,000 participants, reports NPR, adding that this year's cancellation of a mass real-world gathering "has put many people in the event's host community at ease." Wary of a trend of rising coronavirus cases in some parts of the region, Washoe County's district health officer Kevin Dick said "the right call was made," in order to lower the risk of spreading infection. And SFist also notes the festival's "Invitation to the Future" program "where $2,500 buys you a reservation to buy tickets whenever they do announce the event — but that $2,500 does not get you a ticket." "This is a reservation that will guarantee someone the ability to purchase a regular priced ticket for the next two editions of Black Rock City," the Burning Man Project communications team says in an email to SFist... Per the fine print of this arrangement, there will be only 1,000 of these $2,500 reservations that are essentially tickets to buy tickets... "It's going very well!," Burning Man's communications team tells us. "We're so grateful for our generous community. As of this writing, we have only a few hundred left...." Burning Man has to get creative, and maybe perks for big spenders is an acceptable one-time trade-off to ensure its ongoing solvency. The project has gone nearly two years since its last infusion of direct ticket revenue, and the permits and attorney fees necessary to pull off this event on federal land have not gotten any cheaper despite the pandemic.

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