"By 2030, technology will have advanced to the point that even the idea of owning objects might be obsolete," argues a thought-provoking new piece by Gizmodo's consumer tech reporter: Back in 2016, the World Economic Forum released a Facebook video with eight predictions it had for the world in 2030. "You'll own nothing. And you'll be happy," it says. "Whatever you want, you'll rent. And it'll be delivered by drone...." In some ways, not owning things is easier. You have fewer commitments, less responsibility, and the freedom to bail whenever you want. There are upsides to owning less. There's also a big problem... The reality is when you buy a device that requires proprietary software to run, you don't own it. The money you hand over is an entry fee, nothing more. When everything is a lease, you also agree to a life defined by someone else's terms... When hardware is merely a vessel for software and not a useful thing on its own, you don't really get to decide anything. A company will decide when to stop pushing vital updates. It might also decide what you do with the product after it's "dead...." The power has shifted so that companies set the parameters, and consumers have to make do with picking the lesser of several evils... You can trace much of this back to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which basically makes it illegal to circumvent "digital locks" that protect a company's proprietary software... One day in the future, if you buy a physical house, you will likely have to rent the software that operates it. You won't really have a say in the updates that get pushed out, or the features that get taken away. You'll have less of a say in when you renovate or upgrade, even if you want to continue using the house as is. You might not even have the right to do DIY repairs yourself. Just because you've bought a smart washing machine, doesn't mean you'll be allowed to repair it yourself if it breaks — or if you'll be allowed to pick which repair shop can fix it for you. You only have to look as far as John Deere, Apple, and General Motors. Each one of these companies has argued that people who bought their products weren't allowed to repair them unless they were from a pre-approved shop. The scary thing is that only sounds terrible if you have the mental energy to care about principles. Making decisions all the time is difficult, and it's easier when someone else limits the options you can choose from. It's not hard to turn a blind eye to a problem if, for the most part, your life is made a little simpler. Isn't that what every tech company says it's trying to do? Make your life a little simpler? Life is hard enough already, and living in a home that maintains itself so long as you hand over control — well, by 2030, who's to say that's not what we'll all want?

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Bloomberg identifies a variety of cryptocurrency scams, including a "rug pull," where the creators of a new cryptocurrency suddenly cut and run. "Old-fashioned Ponzi schemes, newly cryptodenominated, have swindled people out of billions too," Bloomberg adds. And a 35-year-old crypto trader living with his parents ("trading meme coins as a full-time job") also tells them about "honey pots," where a coin's creators see a spike in value — and then temporarily disable selling for other holders: It might sound like a joke, given the crypto meltdowns of late, but serious money is at stake here. Billions — real billions — are getting pilfered annually through a variety of cryptocurrency scams. The way things are going, this will only get worse. Back in the Wall Street Dark Ages — six, 12, 18 months ago — these sorts of shenanigans were mostly associated with shlocky brokerages like the one depicted in the 2013 movie The Wolf of Wall Street. In those halcyon days before GameStop, Dogecoin and the rest, schlubs on Long Island might pitch ridiculous over-the-counter stocks to the gullible... Tokensniffer, aptly named for Shit Coins, claims to have tracked 42,071 tokens and 2,250 scams or hacks. That was as of June 16. More than 200 supposed stings were logged by users during the first two weeks of June alone... His website scrapes data about new meme tokens from popular social media channels and scans the source code... A "smell test" program searches for vulnerabilities. Clones of existing meme tokens are often a red flag. Most recent scams — the site flagged 450 in in one recent 30-day period — were honeypots. Those tend to be easier to spot because of their code, Tokensniffer's creator says. Rug pulls are more complicated. Such supposed safeguards aside, people are getting scammed in growing numbers. So far this year, over $2.6 billion has been grabbed, according to Chainalysis, a New York-based blockchain researcher. That figure doesn't include a giant Ponzi scheme that just came to light in South Africa. Local authorities put the haul at $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin. Gob-smacking as all of this might sound, these numbers in fact represent a marked decline from 2019, when fraudsters walked away with an estimated $9 billion. But here's a key difference: the sheer number of people getting hoodwinked. With a few outsize exceptions, most crypto scams seem to be getting smaller. That's the good news. The bad news is that there are more of them, and more people are getting stung. From 2019 to 2020, the number of victims has jumped 48% to an estimated 7.3 million, a figure approaching the official population of Hong Kong. Between the last three months of 2020 and the first three months of 2021, the number of unique scams rose nearly 18%, to 1,335, according to Chainalysis... Michael Burry, of "The Big Short"-fame, has been warning all of this could all go horribly wrong. An estimated 10,000 new coins have been minted this year. Who can say how many will turn out to be shams? So many Shit Coins are flying around out there, and prices can be so volatile, that many people can't even tell if they've been scammed... This much is sure: no one complains when they're making money. It's when people start losing money — and lately, many have been — that they scream they've been taken. "A decade after Bitcoin was created, regulators are still grappling with how to police cryptocurrencies," Bloomberg adds, "when the whole point is that they operate without governments or central banks."

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Earlier this year in April Apple started mandating "App Tracking Transparency," which gives users a choice about whether they can be tracked across app. Now tlhIngan (Slashdot reader #30,335) writes: The numbers are in and a number of ad companies are reporting lowered iOS spending, but 10% or more increases in Android ad spending. The complaint is, of course, that without the granular data they used to get from tracking it's no longer worth spending on iOS ads. Interestingly, only about 66% of users have actually denied tracking. That's based on early data from the ad-measurement firm Branch Metrics (as reported by The Wall Street Journal ). MacRumors write: As a result, the amount of advertiser spending on Apple's mobile platform has fallen by about one-third between June 1 and July 1, while spending on Android rose over 10% for the same month, according to ad-measurement firm Tenjin Inc... Without proper user tracking, advertisers have significantly less data about a user's interests, preferences, and more. Advertisers and companies, such as Facebook, use that data to compile a profile of a user. The type of data collected from tracking helps advertisers to ensure that their ads are being targeted to potential customers. [According to ad-measurement firm Tenjin Inc], "The shortage of user data to fuel Facebook Inc.'s suite of powerful ad-targeting tools reduces their effectiveness and appeal among some advertisers, ad agencies say."

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"First SolarWinds, now Kaseya. SaaS software heavily used by managed service providers (MSPs) has now been the target of two successful cyberattacks," writes Slashdot reader storagedude. He shares a ChannelInsider article reporting the Kaseya ransomware attack compromised roughly 1,500 "downstream" businesses — and that now managed service providers "are reassessing their approaches to managing IT" after their own upstream vendors were breached: In many cases, rather than assuming the platforms that MSPs employ are secure, end customers will now require them to prove it via an audit of their software supply chains, says James Shank, Chief Architect of Community Services for Team Cymru, a provider of threat intelligence tools employed to conduct such audits. Shank, who also served on the Ransomware Task Force Committee set up by The Institute for Security and Technology, notes that MSPs should also assume attacks will only get worse before they get any better. "This is not the end or the middle," he says. "It's only the beginning." Others, however, don't think there will be any widespread mandate to audit IT supply chains in the absence of any government requirement. Most organizations are simply not going to conduct or require extensive audits because of the time, effort, money and expertise required, says Mike Hamilton, chief information security officer (CISO) for Critical Insight, a provider of a managed detection and response platform. "American companies are not going to do that unless someone holds their feet to the fire," he says. The challenge that creates for MSPs and their customers is it may force them to continue to place too much trust in IT platforms provided to them by a vendor, says Chris Grove, technology evangelist for Nozomi Networks, a provider of security tools for monitoring networks. "These platforms are over-trusted," he says. The decision many MSPs are specifically wrestling with is the degree to which they should continue to rely on IT service management (ITSM) platforms from an IT vendor that might be compromised by malware versus building and securing their own custom platform. The latter approach is not immune to malware but might be less of a target as cybercriminals increasingly focus their efforts on platforms that enable them to wreck greater downstream havoc. Alternatively, MSPs could switch to IT service management platforms provided by vendors that don't have enough market share to attract the attention of cybercriminals... Building an IT service management platform from scratch naturally requires a level of investment many MSPs lack the funding or expertise to make, notes Eldon Sprickerhoff, chief innovation officer for eSentire, a provider of a managed detection and response platform. "It's a difficult situation," he says.BR> The article points out that few small- to medium-sized businesses can afford their own internal IT security team. Slashdot reader storagedude then suggests "on-premises installed and managed software could get another look as a result of the attacks," while vendors who can prove high levels of security "could gain a market advantage."

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"New data from Statcounter shows that Edge has now overtaken established rival Firefox in the rankings," reports TechRadar: In recent months, the pair have been neck-and-neck, but Microsoft's browser has now put daylight between itself and Firefox. Figures for June suggest Microsoft Edge now holds 3.4% of the browser market, while Firefox has slipped to 3.29%, continuing a downward trajectory that has seen the browser either lose or maintain market share in ten of the last twelve months. The change pushes Edge into third position in the browser rankings, behind only Chrome (65.27%) and Safari (18.34%). Launched in January 2020, the new Chromium-based Edge got off to a slow start, but began to gather momentum as the year progressed. Since last summer, the browser's market share has more than tripled. The increase in adoption can be attributed in part to renewed marketing efforts, but also to improvements that brought the experience in line with other modern web browsers. That may be true, but the article also acknowledges that it was just last month that Microsoft began rolling out Edge to all Windows PCs (via Windows 10 updates), "expanding the install base by millions almost overnight. "Now, Microsoft is doing everything in its power to encourage users to abandon Internet Explorer in favor of Edge, such as removing support for Microsoft 365 web apps and automatically launching certain web pages in the new browser."

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"We're building a chip. A fast chip. A safe chip. A trusted chip," explains the web page at Libre-SOC.org. "A chip with lots of peripherals. And it's VPU. And it's a 3D GPU... Oh and here, have the source code." And now there's big news, reports long-time Slashdot reader lkcl: Libre-SOC's entirely Libre 180nm ASIC, which can be replicated down to symbolic level GDS-II with no NDAs of any kind, has been submitted to IMEC for fabrication. It is the first wholly-independent Power ISA ASIC outside of IBM to go Silicon in 12 years. Microwatt went to Skywater 130nm in March; however, it is also developed by IBM, as an exceptionally well-made Reference Design, which Libre-SOC used for verification. Whilst it would seem that Libre-SOC is jumping on the chip-shortage era's innovation bandwagon, Libre-SOC has actually been in development for over three and a half years so far. It even pre-dates the OpenLane initiative, and has the same objectives: fully automated HDL to GDS-II, full transparency and auditability with Libre VLSI tools Coriolis2 and Libre Cell Libraries from Chips4Makers. With €400,000 in funding from the NLNet Foundation [a long-standing non-profit supporting privacy, security, and the "open internet"], plus an application to NGI Pointer under consideration, the next steps are to continue development of Draft Cray-style Vectors (SVP64) to the already supercomputer-level Power ISA, under the watchful eye of the upcoming OpenPOWER ISA Workgroup.

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A few months ago PC Magazine explained eSIMs: You almost certainly have a SIM card: a thumbnail-sized chip that sits in your mobile phone, telling it which carrier and what phone number you use. Now those SIMs are going digital (or "e") and moving your information to a reprogrammable, embedded chip. A SIM card is a "subscriber identity module." Required in all GSM, LTE, and 5G devices, it's a chip that holds your customer ID and details of how your phone can connect to its mobile network... An eSIM takes the circuitry of a SIM, solders it directly to a device's board, and makes it remotely reprogrammable through software... There are some minor consumer downsides, though. With eSIMs, it's harder to switch one plan between devices — you can't just swap the physical card around — and they can make it harder for you to temporarily remove your SIM if you don't want to be tracked by a carrier. Google's Pixels have had eSIMs since 2017, and Apple's iPhones have had them since 2018... Now let's see how long-time Slashdot reader shanen feels about them: Shopping for a new smartphone due to premature battery swelling of a cheapie, but surprised to find out I can't just plug the SIM into a new phone. There ain't no SIM here, but rather the dying phone has an eSIM.... Quick research indicated it's only software, so my obvious question is "How secure can an eSIM be?" (The obvious search results also fail to produce "fresh" results.) But the black hats have already had a couple of years to work on the problem, and it seems intrinsically difficult to do anything securely if you're only using software. My probably obsolete understanding is that part of the basis of SIM security is that you'd have to destroy the SIM to save its data, but is there an actual security expert in the house? Related question based on my surprise. How would you even know if you're using an eSIM? Especially since it appears to be possible to use an eSIM on a phone with a SIM. Share your own thoughts and opinions in the comments. How secure is an eSIM?

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This piece started as a Twitter thread.

A few days ago the Oatmeal person lamented that RSS was not a wave anymore. It's more like a big lake not a roiling ocean. People go boating, have a picnic, swim in RSS-land, but it isn't like a moon mission or even a Sting concert. :-)

I responded that RSS could be fun again if people would work with each other. Instead of being in it for their own glory, only -- people have to see the benefit of other people and products winning alongside them.

This is not the way tech thinks, or news. They all build self-contained castles. And very rarely do people work together. And that's why RSS stays where it is. Its growth feeds off collaboration.

People don't know this, but RSS got its initial wave, the one you all remember so fondly, from a collaboration between UserLand Software and the New York Times.

We're still coasting off the energy unleashed in that combo. That's how stuff like this happens. People still have the myth of The Great Visionary who sees the right path and leads us out of the wilderness. But that's not how it works.

Instead, two parties with enough power and influence decide, consciously and deliberately, to work together.

If you want to win big, put aside self-glorification and getting ahead for a brief moment, and focus on how you and someone else can break through, creating something that could never exist otherwise. For everyone, not just yourself.

And if someone offers to work with you, think of reasons to say yes.

"The Rust for Linux project, sponsored by Google, has advanced..." reported the Register earlier this week: A new set of patches submitted to the Linux kernel mailing list summarizes the progress of the project to enable Rust to be used alongside C for implementing the Linux kernel. The progress is significant. - ARM and RISC-V architectures are now supported, thanks to work on rustc_codgen_gcc, which is a GCC codegen for rustc. This means that rustc does the initial compilation of Rust code but GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection) does the backend compilation, enabling support for the architectures that GCC supports... - Overall, "the Rust support is still to be considered experimental. However, as noted back in April, support is good enough that kernel developers can start working on the Rust abstractions for subsystems and write drivers and other modules," continued project leader Miguel Ojeda, a computer scientist at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, now working full time on Rust for Linux... There is substantial support for the project across the industry. Google said in April "we feel that Rust is now ready to join C as a practical language for implementing the kernel" and that it would reduce the number of potential bugs and security vulnerabilities. Google is sponsoring Ojeda to work full time on the project for a year, via the ISRG (Internet Security Research Group), which said last month that it is part of "efforts to move the internet's critical software infrastructure to memory safe code," under the project name Prossimo. The ISRG is also the nonprofit organisation behind Let's Encrypt free security certificates. Ojeda also mentioned that Microsoft's Linux Systems Group is contributing and hopes to submit "select Hyper-V drivers written in Rust." Arm is promising assistance with Rust for Linux on ARM-based systems. IBM has contributed Rust kernel support for its PowerPC processor. More detail is promised at the forthcoming Linux Plumber's Conference in September. In the meantime, the project is on GitHub here. "In addition, we would like to announce that we are organizing a new conference that focuses on Rust and the Linux kernel..." Ojeda posted. "Details will be announced soon." And for context, the Register adds: Linus Torvalds has said on several occasions that he welcomes the possibility of using Rust alongside C for kernel development, and told IT Wire in April that it is "getting to the point where maybe it might be mergeable for 5.14 or something like that."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Barry Diller made his name in the film industry as the chairman and CEO of two Hollywood studios, Paramount Pictures and what was then 20th Century Fox. Now, he is declaring the industry dead. "The movie business is over," Diller said in an exclusive interview with NPR on the sidelines of the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, a media and technology conference in Idaho. "The movie business as before is finished and will never come back." Yes, that has to do with a substantial decline in ticket sales and the closure of movie theaters during the coronavirus pandemic. But Diller, the chairman and senior executive of IAC, a company that owns Internet properties, said, "It is much more than that." According to Diller, who ran Paramount and Fox several decades ago, streaming has altered the film industry in substantial ways, including the quality of movies now being made. Last year, several media conglomerates, including Disney and WarnerMedia, decided to debut new releases in movie theaters and on streaming services simultaneously. That was a radical change, and theater chains protested it. "There used to be a whole run-up," Diller said, remembering how much time, energy and money studios invested in distribution and publicity campaigns. The goal, he said, was to generate sustained excitement and enthusiasm for new movies. "That's finished," he said. The way companies measure success is also different, according to Diller. "I used to be in the movie business where you made something really because you cared about it," he said, noting that popular reception mattered more than anything else. When asked about Quibi, the now-defunct streaming platform founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Diller said: "Quibi was just a bad idea. I mean, it's that simple." "It was a bad idea that had no testing ground other than a big-scale investment," Diller said. "Otherwise, it would have slithered around for a while. But it was such a big-scale thing that it lived and died in a millisecond." Diller added: "It has no relevance on anything. The idea of professional, A-quality 10-minutes-or-less stuff just made no sense."

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Last month was the warmest June on record in North America, researchers said Wednesday, confirming the suspicions of millions of people who endured some of the hottest temperatures ever experienced on the continent. The New York Times reports: The Copernicus Climate Change Service, an agency supported by the European Union, said that average surface temperatures for June in North America were about one-quarter of a degree Fahrenheit (0.15 of a degree Celsius) higher than the average for June 2012, the previous record-holder. Last month's average temperature was more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the average from 1991-2020, providing more evidence that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are warming the planet. The June heat was relentless across most of the United States and Canada. Only parts of the Southern Plains and the Southeast in the United States, and Northern Canada east and west of Hudson Bay, were a little cooler than normal. The most brutal conditions were experienced in the Western United States and Southwestern Canada. In the West, the heat prolonged and intensified a severe drought that has shriveled crops, threatened water supplies and contributed to what is shaping up to be a severe wildfire season. The month culminated in a hellish heat wave that crippled much of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. "Europe suffered through its second-warmest June ever, with only June 2019 being warmer," the report notes. "Globally, last month was the fourth hottest June ever. Only 2016, 2019 and 2020 were hotter." Overall, according to the analysis, 2021 is virtually certain to be among the 10 warmest years ever recorded. But thanks to slightly cooler conditions earlier this year related to cooler-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, there is little likelihood that 2021 will make it into the Top 5."

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Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor, Beth Moses, describes the experience of spaceflight.

French designer Thierry Gaugain, known for his impressive yacht designs, including Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' 80-meter vessel Venus, is conceptualizing a $350 million luxury train "envisioned for one unique owner," says Gaugain. CNN reports: Described as a luxurious "palace on rails," the 400-meter long train will be made of 14 cars and glass so technologically advanced that it can switch from opaque to complete transparency. Gaugain feels that travel has become more focused on speed than the actual journey, and he sees the G Train as a mode of transportation where those on board can have just as much, if not more, fun on the way to their chosen destination. "Travel is not about speed," he says. "It's about taking the time, because time is the only treasure we have." And it's not just the exterior of the train that can be transformed at the flick of a switch, passengers can also change "the interior ambiance of the train in whichever section they are." If they want to ensure the outdoor surroundings, they can switch to transparent mode, but if they want to create their own views, they can change the glass to opaque and create pretty much any view they want. "The train is a stage," explains Gaugain. "You can change the light, the season or the pace in order to change your relationship to time." He has yet to find a customer and admits he may need to find "someone as crazy" as himself to buy the train. It will likely be at a cost of around $350 million and the project will take at least two and a half years to build. With space for around 18 overnight guests, the G Train is set to run at 160 kilometers per hour and will be adapted to run on railways across the Americas and Europe. The G Train can be split into two if those onboard decide they want to go off in different directions. Passengers enter via the welcome hall at the center of the train, which leads to its main residential area that includes the owner's accommodation and entertainment space, as well as an area for special guests, a social room, as well as Grand Salon that's specifically designed for receptions. Guests will also have access to a "secret" garden, while the wings of the train can be folded down to devise alfresco terraces, where parties can be held, or even onboard concerts.

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Dilbert readers - Please visit Dilbert.com to read this feature. Due to changes with our feeds, we are now making this RSS feed a link to Dilbert.com.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: In the latest bid to curb video-game addiction in China, tech giant Tencent has launched a facial recognition system to stop minors gaming into the night. The initiative will prevent people under 18 from playing between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. The system, dubbed Midnight Patrol, is in place in more than 60 of Tencent's games and includes popular titles like "Honor of Kings" and "Peacekeeper Elite," the company said in a press release Tuesday. The facial-recognition system will allow Tencent to thwart the tactics kids have developed to get around current age restrictions such as using their parents' identities or devices. The system works by scanning the faces of players to check their age. "Anyone who refuses or fails face verification will be treated as a minor, included in the anti-addiction supervision of Tencent's game health system and kicked offline," the company said. The new rules fall in line with regulations the Chinese government laid out in 2019 to curb video-game addiction.

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