An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that will convene an "emergency meeting" of its advisers on June 18th to discuss rare but higher-than-expected reports of heart inflammation following doses of the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. So far, the CDC has identified 226 reports that might meet the agency's "working case definition" of myocarditis and pericarditis following the shots, the agency disclosed Thursday. The vast majority have recovered, but 41 had ongoing symptoms, 15 are still hospitalized, and 3 are in the intensive care unit. The reports represent just a tiny fraction of the nearly 130 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated with either Pfizer or Moderna's doses. "It's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison because, again, these are preliminary reports. Not all these will turn out to be true myocarditis or pericarditis reports," cautioned Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a CDC vaccine safety official. Shimabukuro said their findings were mostly "consistent" with reports of rare cases of heart inflammation that had been studied in Israel and reported from the U.S. Department of Defense earlier this year. The CDC is working on more data and analysis on the reports ahead of the emergency meeting of its own advisers next week, he said, and also planned to analyze the risk of heart inflammation posed by catching COVID-19. The new details about myocarditis and pericarditis emerged first in presentations to a panel of independent advisers for the Food and Drug Administration, who are meeting Thursday to discuss how the regulator should approach emergency use authorization for using COVID-19 vaccines in younger children.

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Internal company data leaked during a February security breach is now being circulated on the internet, Polish video games maker CD Projekt said in a statement published on Thursday. From a report: The attack, which compromised some of its internal systems including the source code to its much-hyped game Cyberpunk 2077, dealt another blow to the Warsaw-based business after the game's launch was beset by glitches. read more "We are not yet able to confirm the exact contents of the data in question, though we believe it may include current/former employee and contractor details in addition to data related to our games," the statement said. It added that the company couldn't confirm whether or not the data has been manipulated or tampered with since the breach. Not a good day for game developers.

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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday said he is initiating a review of recent high-profile cyber attacks on governments and businesses to find out whether a legislative response is needed. From a report: "Today I am asking Chairman Gary Peters of our Homeland Security Committee and our other relevant committee chairs to begin a government-wide review of these attacks and determine what legislation may be needed to counter the threat of cyber crime and bring the fight to the cyber criminals." Schumer noted that the New York City subway system was the victim of a computer hack in early June. This came on the heels of Colonial Pipeline having to shut down some operations, resulting in disrupted fuel supplies in the U.S. Southeast, as a result of a cyber attack.

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Samsung has announced a new image sensor for smartphone cameras that it says has the smallest pixels in the industry. From a report: The ISOCELL JN1 is a 50-megapixel sensor with a relatively tiny 1/2.76-inch format, meaning its pixels are just 0.64um in size. For comparison, Samsung already broke records in 2019 with the slightly larger ISOCELL Slim GH1, another 50-megapixel sensor with 0.7um pixels. Conventional camera wisdom says that smaller pixels usually result in worse image quality with higher noise, so why is Samsung doing this? According to the company, it's about form factor versatility. The sensor's smaller size means it can be used in ultrawide or telephoto camera modules -- which are challenging to design when size is at a premium -- or as a way to reduce the height of the primary camera bump. As with other high-resolution camera sensors, the JN1 will make use of pixel-binning technology that combines multiple pixels into one for higher light sensitivity. In this case, Samsung says the sensor will capture 12.5-megapixel photos with the equivalent of 1.28um pixels, and the company is also claiming a 16 percent boost to light sensitivity with its ISOCELL 2.0 tech.

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Uber mistakenly sent out an email to some of its drivers and delivery workers last month offering to cover some of their health insurance costs -- only to revoke the offer two weeks later. From a report: On May 26th, an email from Uber with the enticing subject line "It's a great time to get health coverage" appeared in the inbox of an unspecified number of the company's drivers and delivery workers. When they opened the email, they were greeted by an even more alluring proposition: "Uber can help cover your healthcare costs." Drivers and couriers for Uber are classified as independent contractors, making them ineligible for employer-sponsored health insurance plans. For years, many of these workers have lobbied for more benefits and protections, only to face vicious opposition from Uber. So one can only imagine the shock from drivers who opened this email and saw an offer for subsidies ranging from $613.77 to $1,277.54, depending on the type of insurance plan they had and the amount of hours they worked each week. That kind of money could be transformative for drivers, many of whom subsist on poverty-level wages and are struggling to find work amid a steep drop in demand during the pandemic. What could account for this radical change in position by Uber? As it turns out, nothing has changed. Uber intended only to send the email to drivers and delivery workers in California, and not any other state.

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Netflix is branching into toys, games and clothing based on its popular shows, looking to mine popular characters for added revenue much like Walt Disney. From a report: The streaming service is launching Netflix.shop, a retail arm that will sell curated products from its catalog of shows and movies. As part of the launch, Netflix is introducing a collection of anime-inspired products, according to a statement Thursday. Products from other programs are in the works, too. The move into merchandising is a logical extension for Netflix. Other major studios generate billions of dollars in revenue from toys, collectibles and other goods based on popular characters and shows. [...] The shop will open in the U.S. before expanding to other countries, Netflix said.

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House Democrats are set to introduce a package of five bills as soon as this week that would prohibit tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google from discriminating against rivals or buying potential competitors, two individuals familiar with the discussions told POLITICO -- the most serious effort yet to rein in Silicon Valley's power after years of complaints from Congress. From a report: The most controversial bill would let prosecutors sue to break up major tech companies by forcing the platforms to sell off lines of business if they represent a conflict of interest. POLITICO obtained drafts of all five bills. The legislation aims to enact the recommendations from a blockbuster House Judiciary Committee report last fall on competition in digital markets, which found that the four tech giants have monopolized various aspects of the online economy. It also represents a major test for Congress: Can the lawmakers of both parties who have condemned the tech companies as abusive monopolists come together to do something about it? Democrats on the House Judiciary antitrust panel circulated the draft bills to potential co-sponsors this week. They hope to lure at least some GOP members into supporting the bills, particularly Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, a critic of the large tech companies and the top Republican on the panel.

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I'm writing a little app that archives my tweets in JSON-flavored OPML, just to see what might happen.

Hackers have broken into gaming giant Electronic Arts, the publisher of Battlefield, FIFA, and The Sims, and stole a wealth of game source code and related internal tools, Motherboard reported Thursday. From the report: "You have full capability of exploiting on all EA services," the hackers claimed in various posts on underground hacking forums viewed by Motherboard. A source with access to the forums, some of which are locked from public view, provided Motherboard with screenshots of the messages. In those forum posts the hackers said they have taken the source code for FIFA 21, as well as code for its matchmaking server. The hackers also said they have obtained source code and tools for the Frostbite engine, which powers a number of EA games including Battlefield. Other stolen information includes proprietary EA frameworks and software development kits (SDKs), bundles of code that can make game development more streamlined. In all, the hackers say they have 780gb of data, and are advertising it for sale in various underground hacking forum posts viewed by Motherboard. EA confirmed to Motherboard that it had suffered a data breach and that the information listed by the hackers was the data that was stolen.

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We need some real investigative journalism. Which of our systems are most vulnerable to attack? Should've been done a long time ago.

Amid an intensifying drought, Lake Mead in Nevada, the nation's largest reservoir by volume, reached its lowest level since the 1930s late Wednesday. From a report: The record low is due to a combination of years of punishing drought that's worsening across the Southwest, as well as challenges in managing water resources for a burgeoning population. The record-low reading, as well as expected subsequent drops in the lake, are almost certain to trigger a federal "water shortage" declaration later this summer, which would set off cuts in water allocations to several states. Lake Mead, which sits along the border between Nevada and Arizona, is part of the vast Colorado River basin that provides water for agriculture and human consumption to seven states, and also generates electricity at the massive Hoover Dam. Cuts in water supplies, to be determined in August, would affect the region's farmers, residents of sprawling cities such as Las Vegas, and others. Already, the Hoover Dam is operating below its maximum capacity, and it could see a further reduction in power generation as the summer goes on. Years of unusually dry conditions along with a growing population and water resource decisions have helped lead to the situation. As of Thursday morning, the Bureau of Reclamation showed Lake Mead's hourly water levels dipped to 1,071.48 feet Thursday, and remained below the previous record set on July 1, 2016.

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Programming note. I've decided that, in LO2 and other outliners, the special icon for tweets is annoying. Especially when it's just an outline of tweets. They will still have the "tweet" type attribute, but they will display with the default wedge.

'Climate fails' include misguided tree planting and large-scale bioenergy crops, say scientists.

Amazon.com is getting U.K. antitrust scrutiny into how it uses data from smaller sellers on its site, the Financial Times reported, citing three people with knowledge of the matter. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority has been analyzing Amazon's business for months, according to the newspaper. While the regulator hasn't yet announced an investigation, it may focus on whether Amazon favors merchants that use its logistics and delivery services, the report said. Silicon Valley giants are the focus of a vast array of European probes into how internet giants increasingly govern the terms of what people do online, often gaining insights into user behavior that no-one else can match. The U.K. move adds to European Union and German probes of Amazonâ(TM)s business and follows multiple investigations into Google, Facebook and Apple.

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Google is changing its algorithm as part of a major shift in how Google polices harmful content. From a report: For many years, the vicious cycle has spun: Websites solicit lurid, unverified complaints about supposed cheaters, sexual predators, deadbeats and scammers. People slander their enemies. The anonymous posts appear high in Google results for the names of victims. Then the websites charge the victims thousands of dollars to take the posts down. This circle of slander has been lucrative for the websites and associated middlemen -- and devastating for victims. Now Google is trying to break the loop. The company plans to change its search algorithm to prevent websites, which operate under domains like BadGirlReport.date and PredatorsAlert.us, from appearing in the list of results when someone searches for a person's name. Google also recently created a new concept it calls "known victims." When people report to the company that they have been attacked on sites that charge to remove posts, Google will automatically suppress similar content when their names are searched for. "Known victims" also includes people whose nude photos have been published online without their consent, allowing them to request suppression of explicit results for their names. The changes -- some already made by Google and others planned for the coming months -- are a response to recent New York Times articles documenting how the slander industry preys on victims with Google's unwitting help.

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