An anonymous reader writes: Software used by the Department of Homeland Security to scan the records of millions of immigrants can automatically flag naturalized Americans to potentially have their citizenship revoked based on secret criteria, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept. The software, known as ATLAS, takes information from immigrants' case files and runs it though various federal databases. ATLAS looks for indicators that someone is dangerous or dishonest and is ostensibly designed to detect fraud among people who come into contact with the U.S. immigration system. But advocates for immigrants believe that the real purpose of the computer program is to create a pretext to strip people of citizenship. Whatever the motivation, ATLAS's intended outcome is ultimately deportation, judging from the documents, which originate within DHS and were obtained by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Muslim Advocates through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. ATLAS helps DHS investigate immigrants' personal relationships and backgrounds, examining biometric information like fingerprints and, in certain circumstances, considering an immigrant's race, ethnicity, and national origin. It draws information from a variety of unknown sources, plus two that have been criticized as being poorly managed: the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database, also known as the terrorist watchlist, and the National Crime Information Center. Powered by servers at tech giant Amazon, the system in 2019 alone conducted 16.5 million screenings and flagged more than 120,000 cases of potential fraud or threats to national security and public safety. Ultimately, humans at DHS are involved in determining how to handle immigrants flagged by ATLAS. But the software threatens to amplify the harm caused by bureaucratic mistakes within the immigration system, mistakes that already drive many denaturalization and deportation cases. "ATLAS should be considered as suspect until it is shown not to generate unfair, arbitrary, and discriminatory results," said Laura Bingham, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative. "From what we are able to scrutinize in terms of the end results -- like the disparate impact of denaturalization based on national origin -- there is ample reason to consider ATLAS a threat to naturalized citizens."

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Jeremy Keith, a web developer and contributor to the web standards movement, has resigned from the AMP Advisory Committee. Keith was selected for the committee last year, despite his well-documented criticisms of the AMP project. From a report: In his resignation email, he cites Google's control of the project and its small percentage of open source parts as reasons for his growing resentment: "I can't in good faith continue to advise on the AMP project for the OpenJS Foundation when it has become clear to me that AMP remains a Google product, with only a subset of pieces that could even be considered open source. If I were to remain on the advisory committee, my feelings of resentment about this situation would inevitably affect my behaviour. So it's best for everyone if I step away now instead of descending into outright sabotage. It's not you, it's me." During his time with the committee, Keith worked on defining what AMP is and pushing for clarification on whether the project encompasses more than just a collection of web components. The Google-controlled AMP cache and validation aspects of the project were the most concerning in evaluating his continued participation.

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Western Digital is in advanced talks for a potential $20 billion stock merger with Japanese semiconductor firm Kioxia Holdings, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Reuters: The companies could reach an agreement as early as mid-September, and Western Digital Chief Executive Officer David Goeckeler would run the combined firm, the report said. The news sent Western Digital's shares up as much as 15% in afternoon trading to a market cap of $21.45 billion. Kioxia Holdings, the world's second-largest maker of flash memory chips, last year shelved plans for what would have been Japan's largest initial public offering in 2020. In June, however, financial magazine Diamond said the company was planning an IPO as early as September.

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Facebook is considering building products and features related to nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, the digital assets that have taken off with the rise of blockchain technology. From a report: "We're definitely looking at the number of ways to get involved in the space because we think we're in a really good position to do so," Facebook executive David Marcus said Tuesday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Marcus leads F2, or Facebook Financial, the internal group developing the company's Novi digital wallet. That wallet could be used to hold NFTs, he said. "When you have a good crypto wallet like Novi will be, you also have to think about how to help consumers support NFTs," he added. "We're definitely thinking about this." He wasn't more specific about what kinds of NFT-related products Facebook might build. Facebook's digital wallet is "ready now," Marcus said, but the company has been waiting to launch it until it can do so alongside Diem, the digital currency previously known as Libra, which Marcus co-founded from within Facebook in 2019. Plans are for Diem to offer a so-called stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar, but it's unclear when the coin will be introduced. The project faced immense pushback from lawmakers and regulators when it was unveiled, and while Facebook is still a partner on the project, Diem is now run independently.

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An anonymous reader writes: ISPs are quietly distributing "netflow" data that can, among other things, trace traffic through VPNs. There's something of an open secret in the cybersecurity world: internet service providers quietly give away detailed information about which computer is communicating with another to private businesses, which then sells access to that data to a range of third parties, according to multiple sources in the threat intelligence industry. The information, known as netflow data, is a useful tool for digital investigators. They can use it to identify servers being used by hackers, or to follow data as it is stolen. But the sale of this information still makes some people nervous because they are concerned about whose hands it may fall into. "I'm concerned that netflow data being offered for commercial purposes is a path to a dark fucking place," one source familiar with the data told Motherboard. Motherboard granted multiple sources anonymity to speak more candidly about industry issues.

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On August 25, 1991, Linus Torvalds, then a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, sent a message to the comp.os.minix newsgroup soliciting feature suggestions for a free Unix-like operating system he was developing as a hobby. Thirty years later, that software, now known as Linux, is everywhere. From a report: It dominates the supercomputer world, with 100 per cent market share. According to Google, the Linux kernel is at the heart of more than three billion active devices running Android, the most-used operating system in the world. Linux also powers the vast majority of web-facing servers Netcraft surveyed. It is even used more than Microsoft Windows on Microsoft's own Azure cloud. And then there are the embedded electronics and Internet-of-Things spaces, and other areas. Linux has failed to gain traction among mainstream desktop users, where it has a market share of about 2.38 per cent, or 3.59 per cent if you include ChromeOS, compared to Windows (73.04 per cent) and macOS (15.43 per cent). But the importance of Linux has more to do with the triumph of an idea: of free, open-source software. "It cannot be overstated how critical Linux is to today's internet ecosystem," Kees Cook, security and Linux kernel engineer at Google, told The Register via email. "Linux currently runs on everything from the smartphone we rely on everyday to the International Space Station. To rely on the internet is to rely on Linux." The next 30 years of Linux, Cook contends, will require the tech industry to work together on security and to provide more resources for maintenance and testing.

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"Destiny 2" is the second major game in a week to promise anti-cheat services as an upcoming feature. From a report: Cheating is widespread in many major online games, driving players, including influential streamers, to quit in frustration. No one likes getting shot by a player who is paying for a cheat to effectively snipe without aiming. Anti-cheat software isn't new. But in the ongoing arms race between cheaters and developers, the implementation of better anti-cheat tech is meant to tell players it's OK to play. During a Tuesday showcase of upcoming content for "Destiny 2," a developer said that anti-cheat was ââ"one of the biggest asks from our community" and is being offered in advance of the highly competitive Trials of Osiris mode. (The studio teased the addition last week.) Last week, Activision devoted a portion of its blog post announcing the next paid "Call of Duty" game to note that "Warzone," its very popular -- and cheater-infested -- free battle royale, would soon get "a new PC anti-cheat system across the entire experience when it launches with the new map." Activision has banned more than 500,000 "Warzone" accounts for cheating since the game's 2020 launch, while Bungie has filed new lawsuits against sites that sell cheats.

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Game devs of all sizes and scopes respond to the question: "What is a thing in video games that seems simple but is actually extremely hard to make?" From a report: Earlier this year, game developers across the industry weighed in on Twitter on a seemingly innocuous question: What's the problem with doors in video games? It turns out, a lot. A seemingly boring feature such as usable doors can be absolute hell for developers to put in their games for numerous reasons. Everything from physics to functionality, from AI to sound, comes into play while making a single door in a single video game work. And not just work, but work in such a way where the player never has to think about it. Building a working, forgettable door is an incredible game development undertaking. But it will probably not surprise you to learn that doors are far from the only seemingly simple feature that prove to be unexpectedly challenging in the development process. A few months ago, I asked developers across the industry the question, "What is a thing in video games that seems simple but is actually extremely hard for game developers to make?" I received nearly 100 responses representing a wide breadth of industry experience, ranging from solo developers to those who had tackled issues within teams of hundreds. The pool of responses similarly included a number of varied problems, but also a number of similar issues popping up among many projects. Those I spoke to described challenges in making games look and sound good, storytelling, movement and interaction with objects, menus, save systems, multiplayer, and all sorts of intricacies of design that are so rarely discussed outside of studios themselves. Many noted that they've received angry player feedback about the topics they mentioned, with their audiences asking, "Why don't you just do X?" The answer is, almost always: because it's really, really hard. So if you've ever wondered why the maker of your favorite game didn't simply fix one of the myriad issues developers mentioned below, here's why those seemingly simple problems are hardly simple at all. As the original topic of game development headaches focused on doors, it made sense that many of the developers I spoke to had issues with other methods used to connect a person from one place to another. For instance, elevators. Multiple developers told me about the frustrations of elevators, whether they're taking players up a single floor in a building or serving as pseudo-loading screens between two major game areas. [...]

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I remember a couple of years ago when people were confidently saying that by now the streets would be full of autonomous cars.

They snickered when people like me who have spent a life programming thought that was a pretty shitty idea. Who would even want to go out for a walk with driverless cars all over the place, subject to the mistakes programmers make, or the the callous deprecations of platform vendors.

I imagined a car plowing into a crowd and killing twenty innocent people because some idiot at Apple decided to change the order the params of an API because they felt like it, and the car software dev missed the notice and didn't update the car's OS.

Oh sure I want software doing all the driving after less than tw years of a burn in. Yeah that makes all the sense in the world (Sorry for the sarcasm.)

I wanted to try Holly+ so I recorded a song but got "error" and did another, and also got an error. Disappointed. I thought it was a good idea. Maybe my songs weren't good enough. Oh la.

"The window of opportunity" for crucial studies into how the Covid-19 pandemic started is closing, scientists say.

I saw somewhere the Biden's approval numbers are down because the virus is booming. This is wrong. He's doing the job we hired him to do. Our mistake is we give up our power and responsibility and look to a parent figure to take care of us. But that's not how America works. The president isn't all-powerful, isn't a god, or even god-like. The president is a human being. We should judge the president on their honor and intelligence, and ability to listen, and we should take responsibility for our power.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $5 million fine against right-wing activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for allegedly making illegal robocalls discouraging mail voting ahead of the 2020 election. From a report: The record-setting penalty from the FCC comes as the pair faces criminal charges of voter suppression in Michigan and a federal lawsuit in New York accusing them of making 85,000 robocalls to Black Americans in an attempt to keep them from voting. The FCC says Wohl and Burkman made over 1,000 pre-recorded calls to wireless phones without receiving consent for those calls, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The messages said if the voters cast their ballot by mail, their "personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts," according to an FCC news release.

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A South Korean parliamentary committee voted on Wednesday to recommend amending a law, a key step toward banning Google and Apple from forcibly charging software developers commissions on in-app purchases, the first such curb by a major economy. From a report: Apple and Alphabet's Google have faced global criticism because they require software developers using their app stores to use proprietary payment systems that charge commissions of up to 30%. In a statement on Tuesday, Apple said the bill "will put users who purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud, undermine their privacy protections," hurt user trust in App Store purchases and lead to fewer opportunities for South Korean developers. Wilson White, senior director of public policy at Google, said "the rushed process hasn't allowed for enough analysis of the negative impact of this legislation on Korean consumers and app developers". Experts said app store operators could assure security in payment systems other than their own by working with developers and other companies. Further reading: Apple and Google's Fight in Seoul Tests Biden in Washington.

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Temperatures in Europe in 2020 broke the previous high mark by a worrying margin say scientists.