An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Teleperformance, one of the world's largest call center companies, is reportedly requiring some employees to consent to video monitoring in their homes. Employees in Colombia told NBC News that their new contract granted the company the right to use AI-powered cameras to observe and record their workspaces. The contract also requires employees to share biometric data like fingerprints and photos of themselves, and workers have to agree to share data and images that may include children under 18. Teleperformance employs over 380,000 people in 83 countries to provide call center services for a range of companies, including Amazon, Apple, and Uber. A company spokesperson told NBC that it is "constantly looking for ways to enhance the Teleperformance Colombia experience for both our employees and our customers, with privacy and respect as key factors in everything we do." Amazon and Apple said that they did not ask Teleperformance for this extra monitoring, and an Apple spokesperson said the company forbids video monitoring of employees by suppliers. A recent Apple audit reportedly found Teleperformance in compliance with this requirement. But Uber apparently requested the ability to monitor some workers. Uber said it wouldn't observe the entire workforce, but the company did not specify which employees would be subject to the new policies. The ride sharing company asked for the monitoring of Teleperformance's remote employees because call center staff have access to customers credit cards and trip details, an Uber spokesperson told NBC News.

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Apple defended its new system to scan iCloud for illegal child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) on Monday during an ongoing controversy over whether the system reduces Apple user privacy and could be used by governments to surveil citizens. From a report: Last week, Apple announced it has started testing a system that uses sophisticated cryptography to identify when users upload collections of known child pornography to its cloud storage service. It says it can do this without learning about the contents of a user's photos stored on its servers. Apple reiterated on Monday that its system is more private than those used by companies like Google and Microsoft because its system uses both its servers and software running on iPhones. Privacy advocates and technology commentators are worried Apple's new system, which includes software that will be installed on people's iPhones through an iOS update, could be expanded in some countries through new laws to check for other types of images, like photos with political content, instead of just child pornography. Apple said in a document posted to its website on Sunday governments cannot force it to add non-CSAM images to a hash list, or the file of numbers that correspond to known child abuse images Apple will distribute to iPhones to enable the system.

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Antitrust officials at the U.S. Justice Department said they have "grave concerns" about plans by T-Mobile US to shut down the wireless network used by millions of Boost Mobile customers. From a report: The department's worries were disclosed Monday in a regulatory filing by Dish Network, which bought Boost as part of an antitrust settlement approved by the Justice Department that cleared the way for T-Mobile's takeover of Sprint last year. T-Mobile operates the 3G network known as CDMA that's used by Boost. "The Division is left with grave concerns about the potential for a nationwide CDMA shutdown to leave a substantial proportion of Boost's customers without service," the acting head of the department's antitrust division, Richard Powers, wrote to Dish and T-Mobile in a July 9 letter. The dispute over the network, which T-Mobile plans to decommission on Jan. 1, is threatening the elaborate antitrust deal brokered by the Trump administration's Justice Department, which allowed T-Mobile to buy Sprint even though the deal consolidated the mobile phone market to three national players. The Justice Department had long said four players were needed to ensure the market is competitive.

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JoshuaZ writes: As the world battles historic droughts, landscape-altering wildfires and deadly floods, a landmark report from global scientists says the window is rapidly closing to cut our reliance on fossil fuels and avoid catastrophic changes that would transform life as we know it. The state-of-the-science report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world has rapidly warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, and is now careening toward 1.5 degrees -- a critical threshold that world leaders agreed warming should remain below to avoid worsening impacts. Only by making deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, while also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, can we halt the precipitous trend. "Bottom line is that we have zero years left to avoid dangerous climate change, because it's here," Michael E. Mann, a lead author of the IPCC's 2001 report, told CNN. Unlike previous assessments, Monday's report concludes it is "unequivocal" that humans have caused the climate crisis and confirms that "widespread and rapid changes" have already occurred, some of them irreversibly. That is due in part to the breakneck pace at which the planet has been recently warming, faster than scientists have previously observed. Since 2018, when the panel published a special report on the significance of 1.5-degrees, greenhouse gas emissions have continued mostly unabated and have pushed global temperatures higher. Even under the IPCC's most optimistic scenario, in which the world's emissions begin to drop sharply today and are reduced to net zero by 2050, global temperature will still peak above the 1.5-degree threshold before falling. In a statement, UN Secretary-General Antanio Guterres called the report "a code red for humanity," and noted the 1.5-degree threshold is "perilously close." "The only way to prevent exceeding this threshold is by urgently stepping up our efforts, and pursuing the most ambitious path," Guterres said.

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Vodafone has announced it will reintroduce roaming charges in Europe for UK mobile customers from January next year. From a report: It's the latest UK carrier to reintroduce the fees after the country's departure from the European Union, and it follows a similar U-turn from EE in June. All major carriers in the country previously said they had no plans to introduce roaming fees in Europe after the Brexit vote. The fees will apply to any Vodafone customers who sign up to or change their contract from August 11th, 2021, with the fees applying from January 6th, 2022. Costs are dependent on the specific plan, but most customers will pay $2.77 a day to use their UK allowance of calls, texts, and data in Europe, or $1.4 a day if access is bought in eight- or 15-day bundles.

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New submitter tslinks7 writes: The US Navy is developing solar-powered aircraft to fly for 90 days at a time. The Skydweller aircraft could be used as a communications relay platform or a constant eye in the sky to escort surface ships. The testbed aircraft adds new software and upgraded hardware to Solar Impulse 2, a piloted solar aircraft that flew around the world in 2015-16. The new plane is made by US-Spanish aerospace firm Skydweller Aero. The company was awarded a $5 million contract to develop the aircraft.

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Facebook's decision to close accounts connected to a misinformation research project last week prompted a broad outcry from the company's critics -- and now Congress is getting involved. From a report: A handful of lawmakers criticized the decision at the time, slamming Facebook for being hostile toward efforts to make the platform's opaque algorithms and ad targeting methods more transparent. Researchers believe that studying those hidden systems is crucial work for gaining insight on the flow of political misinformation. The company specifically punished two researchers with NYU's Cybersecurity for Democracy project who work on Ad Observer, an opt-in browser tool that allows researchers to study how Facebook targets ads to different people based on their interests and demographics. In a new letter, embedded below, a trio of Democratic senators are pressing Facebook for more answers. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE) and Mark Warner (D-VA) wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking for a full explanation on why the company terminated the researcher accounts and how they violated the platform's terms of service and compromised user privacy. The lawmakers sent the letter on Friday.

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Valve is aiming to make its Steam Deck handheld gaming PC ready for Windows 11. From a report: While we've known for weeks that the Steam Deck can run Windows, it wasn't clear how well this would be supported by Valve, or whether an option for a Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) would be enabled to get Windows 11 on the Steam Deck. Now, Valve has confirmed it has been heavily focused on Windows support. "There's work looking at TPM just now," says Greg Coomer, a Valve Steam Deck designer, in an interview with PC Gamer. "We've focused so much on Windows 10, so far, that we haven't really gotten that far into it. Our expectation is that we can meet that." Valve is working with AMD to make sure that TPM is supported at a BIOS level, and that the Steam Deck is ready for Windows 11. "So there's nothing to indicate to us yet that there'll be any issues with Windows 11," explains Coomer.

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Ever wonder how cheap, no-name products on Amazon can amass hundreds, sometimes thousands, of nearly perfect star ratings, with just a handful of negative reviews? From a report: Here's one way: Some sellers are reaching out to unhappy buyers to revise or delete their negative reviews, in exchange for refunds or gift cards. With fewer disgruntled shoppers, the overall average star rating rises. Sellers who ship products via Amazon aren't supposed to reach out to customers outside of Amazon's official channel -- in fact, it's a violation of the terms they agree to on the retail platform. In March, New Yorker Katherine Scott picked out an oil spray bottle for cooking, based on nearly 1,000 glowing Amazon reviews of the product, which had a 4.5-star rating average. When the $10 sprayer arrived, she found the item didn't work as advertised: Instead of a mist, it produced a stream of oil, she said. She left a negative review. A week later, Ms. Scott received an email from someone claiming to be from the customer-service team of the oil sprayer's brand, Auxtun -- correspondence which I have reviewed. "We are willing to refund in full," the representative wrote. "We hope you can reconsider deleting comments at your convenience okay?" The message concluded, "When we do not receive a response, we will assume that you did not see it, and will continue to send emails." The seller shouldn't have had her email address. Sellers who fulfill orders themselves do receive customer names and mailing addresses. But for orders that Amazon itself fulfills, customer data is supposed to be shielded from sellers and brands. Sellers are permitted to communicate with buyers through Amazon's built-in messaging platform, which hides the customer's email address. Amazon's terms of service also prohibit sellers from requesting that a customer remove a negative review or post a positive one. "We do not share customer email addresses with third-party sellers," an Amazon spokesman told me. Meanwhile, brands, which can be distinct from sellers, may reach out to unsatisfied customers through Amazon's messaging service, but they also aren't allowed to ask customers to remove negative reviews. Ms. Scott asked for a refund but didn't want to delete her review. Another representative reached out the next day and declined to issue her refund. "A bad review is a fatal blow to us," read the email. "Could you help me delete the review? If you can, I want to refund $20 to you to express my gratitude." (This was twice what Ms. Scott paid.) A few hours later, she received another plea from the same email address. "It was so creepy. They emailed me directly about it over and over," Ms. Scott said. Ms. Scott contacted Amazon twice about the matter. I reviewed Amazon's chat transcripts and emails.

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Is there a theory on why the Repubs are going along with Biden's infrastructure bill? I've heard that it's their way to break away from Trump. Also thought it might be a trap, to push forward the date when they deficit ceiling has to be raised? Very odd.

I loved everything about Alice Walker's narration of The Color Purple. It's a beautiful story, and Walker has such a beautiful voice, oddly I find myself narrating my own story in my head in her voice. The book is in the form of letters between two sisters, who lead very different intertwined lives starting in the early 20th century. This has been so far a year where I have let black authors speak to me of the black perspective on life in America. I'm going to continue this exploration.

Heatwaves, wildfires, floods and droughts highlight how extreme weather is linked to climate change.

Routers and modems running a version of the Arcadyan firmware, including devices from ASUS, Orange, Vodafone, and Verizon, are currently under attack from a threat actor attempting to ensnare the devices into their DDoS botnet. From a report: First spotted by security firm Bad Packets earlier this week and confirmed by Juniper Labs on Friday, the attacks are exploiting a vulnerability tracked as CVE-2021-20090. Discovered by Tenable security researcher Evan Grant earlier this year, the vulnerability resides in the firmware code produced by Taiwanese tech firm Arcadyan. Grant says the vulnerability has existed in the code for at least ten years and has made its way into the firmware of at least 20 router and modem models sold by 17 different vendors, which based their products on a white-label version of old Arcadyan devices. The list of affected devices includes some of today's biggest router vendors and internet service providers, such as ASUS, Orange, Vodafone, Telstra, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, British Telecom, and many others.

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Back in 1998, we were getting ready to simplify scripting of apps that ran on other nodes on the net. I felt there was no reason function calls should be more complicated than they need to be, just because the function was on a server. Spoiler alert, we did implement this in Frontier and it was wonderful. Now the question is -- can we implement it in JavaScript, or will it require a pre-preprocessor, which is an option in Drummer since we have a very thin pre-processor. I opened a thread for discussion here.

Amazon.com -- summoning its inner Oprah -- will offer cash prizes of as much as $500,000 as well as cars and vacation packages to frontline employees who can prove they have been vaccinated against Covid-19. From a report: Unwilling so far to mandate vaccinations for its 1.3-million-strong workforce, the world's largest online retailer is hoping a corporate lottery -- called Max Your Vax -- will persuade holdouts to get the jab. The announcement, a copy of which was seen Friday by Bloomberg, came the same day that Amazon said that starting Aug. 9 workers would have to wear masks in its logistics facilities, regardless of vaccination status -- a reflection of the severity of the spreading delta variant of the coronavirus. Vaccinated workers had been able to work at Amazon mask-free since late May. Amazon had previously offered frontline workers as much as $80 if they were inoculated against the virus. The company is desperate for workers to keep up with elevated demand from online shoppers and staff dozens of new facilities coming online. Some frontline Amazonians and their managers said the company is concerned mandates would send vaccine skeptics in their ranks in search of other jobs. Amazon's contest will offer a total of 18 prizes, which the company values at almost $2 million: two $500,000 cash awards, six $100,000 awards, five new vehicles and five vacation packages.

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