Feed aggregator

theodp writes: What if we could build a better world through code?", begins the just-released teaser video for Microsoft's 2020 Hour of Code: A Minecraft Tale of Two Villages . "Help us bring two villages together through the power of code! [...] You will experience empathy and compassion for your neighbor while embracing the diversity that makes us all uniquely special." Intended for ages 7-and-up, the accompanying Educator Guide suggests opening the 45-minute coding lesson (using Blocks or Python) with a 10-minute discussion of unconscious and conscious bias, including "prejudice based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, gender identity, physical ability, religion, and body weight." The Guide also suggests how teachers might explain to students the harm biases can cause: "Both conscious and unconscious biases can cause us to behave negatively or discriminate against people. When we stereotype people based on their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or some other characteristic, it can be detrimental to us and our community. On a larger and extreme scale, bias can lead to oppression, genocide, and even slavery." The Guide notes that this year's Hour of Code lesson adheres to five Social Justice Standards. The use of Minecraft, Microsoft Education suggests, will help keep students developing and applying social and emotional skills during the pandemic.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has apologised to Europe's industry chief Thierry Breton over a leaked internal document proposing ways to counter the EU's tough new rules for technology companies. From a report: Pichai and Breton exchanged views in a video-conference call late on Thursday, the third this year, according to a statement from the European Commission. "The Internet cannot remain a 'Wild West': we need clear and transparent rules, a predictable environment and balanced rights and obligations," Breton told Pichai. The call came after a Google internal document outlined a 60-day strategy to counter the European Union's push for the new rules by getting U.S. allies to push back against Breton. The call was initiated by Google before the document was leaked. Breton brought up the leaked document and showed it to Pichai during the call and said that there was no need to use old century tactics and to play one unit at the Commission against another, a person familiar with the call said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told an all-staff meeting on Thursday that former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon had not violated enough of the company's policies to justify his suspension when he urged beheading two senior U.S. officials, according to a recording heard by Reuters. Zuckerberg acknowledged criticism of Facebook by President-elect Joe Biden but said the company shared some of the Biden team's same concerns about social media. He urged employees not to jump to conclusions about how the new administration might approach regulation of social media companies. Bannon suggested in a video posted on Nov. 5 that FBI Director Christopher Wray and government infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci should be beheaded, saying they had been disloyal to U.S. President Donald Trump, who last week lost his re-election bid to Biden. Facebook removed the video but left up Bannon's page, which has about 175,000 followers. Twitter banned Bannon last week over the same content. "We have specific rules around how many times you need to violate certain policies before we will deactivate your account completely," Zuckerberg said. "While the offenses here, I think, came close to crossing that line, they clearly did not cross the line." Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said the company would take further action against Bannon's page "if there are additional violations." Last Friday, independent activist network Avaaz alerted Facebook to a network of misinformation pages that Steve Bannon was involved with. "We're a small team run with small donations," Quran told Gizmodo. "If we can spot this stuff, a multi-billion dollar company with tens of thousands of employees focused on the election and disinformation most certainly can. We are tired of doing their job for them." Quran added that Avaaz has been alerting Facebook to its problems all year. "If 2016 was an accident," Quran added, "2020 has been negligence."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: Millions of Android smart television sets from the Chinese vendor TCL Technology Group Corporation contained gaping software security holes that researchers say could have allowed remote attackers to take control of the devices, steal data or even control cameras and microphones to surveil the set's owners. The security holes appear to have been patched by the manufacturer in early November. However the manner in which the holes were closed is raising further alarm among the researchers about whether the China-based firm is able to access and control deployed television sets without the owner's knowledge or permission, according to a report published on Monday by two security researchers. The report describes two serious software security holes affecting TCL brand television sets. First, a vulnerability in the software that runs TCL Android Smart TVs allowed an attacker on the adjacent network to browse and download sensitive files over an insecure web server running on port 7989. That flaw, CVE-2020-27403, would allow an unprivileged remote attacker on the adjacent network to download most system files from the TV set up to and including images, personal data and security tokens for connected applications. The flaw could lead to serious critical information disclosure, the researchers warned. Second, the researchers found a vulnerability in the TCL software that allowed a local unprivileged attacker to read from and write to critical vendor resource directories within the TV's Android file system, including the vendor upgrades folder. That flaw was assigned the identifier CVE-2020-28055. The researchers, John Jackson, an application security engineer for Shutter Stock, and the independent researcher known by the handle "Sick Codes," said the flaws amount to a "back door" on any TCL Android smart television. "Anybody on an adjacent network can browse the TV's file system and download any file they want," said Sick Codes in an interview via the Signal platform. That would include everything from image files to small databases associated with installed applications, location data or security tokens for smart TV apps like Gmail. If the TCL TV set was exposed to the public Internet, anyone on the Internet could connect to it remotely, he said, noting that he had located a handful of such TCL Android smart TVs using the Shodan search engine.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sciencehabit writes: Two years ago, a global dust storm veiled Mars. But although the storm took a toll, killing off NASA's Opportunity rover, it also revealed that such storms play an important role in how the once-wet planet loses its water. In 2014, looking back at data from 2007, scientists noticed that the fluorescent fog of hydrogen in the martian upper atmosphere faded as the southern hemisphere's summer ended and a previous global dust storm subsided. The only plausible source for that hydrogen was water. Subsequent observations have indicated that water, buoyed by storms, can reach much higher in the atmosphere than previously thought -- all the way to the ionosphere, a new paper reports. This allows charged particles to directly break the water apart, and it is likely the primary method of water loss on the planet today.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org : Even if humanity stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, Earth will warm for centuries to come and oceans will rise by meters, according to a controversial modeling study published Thursday. Natural drivers of global warming -- more heat-trapping clouds, thawing permafrost, and shrinking sea ice -- already set in motion by carbon pollution will take on their own momentum, researchers from Norway reported in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. Using a stripped-down climate model, [lead author Jorgen Randers, a professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School] and colleague Ulrich Goluke projected changes out to the year 2500 under two scenarios: the instant cessation of emissions, and the gradual reduction of planet warming gases to zero by 2100. In an imaginary world where carbon pollution stops with a flip of the switch, the planet warms over the next 50 years to about 2.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels -- roughly half-a-degree above the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement -- and cools slightly after that. Earth's surface today is 1.2C hotter than it was in the mid-19th century, when temperatures began to rise. But starting in 2150, the model has the planet beginning to gradually warm again, with average temperatures climbing another degree over the following 350 years, and sea levels going up by at least three meters. Under the second scenario, Earth heats up to levels that would tear at the fabric of civilization far more quickly, but ends up at roughly the same point by 2500. The core finding -- contested by leading climate scientists -- is that several thresholds, or "tipping points", in Earth's climate system have already been crossed, triggering a self-perpetuating process of warming, as has happened millions of years in the past. One of these drivers is the rapid retreat of sea ice in the Arctic. [...] Another source is the thawing of permafrost, which holds twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere. The third is increasing amounts of water vapor, which also has a warming effect. Reactions from half-a-dozen leading climate scientists to the study -- which the authors acknowledge is schematic -- varied sharply, with some saying the findings merit follow-up research, and others rejecting it out of hand. There is a way to stop the melting process, but it involves sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it underground, which isn't yet possible at the scale required. The authors also suggest making Earth's surface brighter and planting billions of trees to slow or halt the planet warming gases.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Temperature and symptom-based screening programs don't help catch coronavirus cases, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new report that took a closer look at the programs used at US airports until mid-September. CNN reports: The CDC said this was a resource-intensive program that had a low case detection rate. Between January 17 and September 13, the CDC screened more than 766,000 travelers. Nearly 300 met the criteria for public health assessment, 35 were tested for the coronavirus, and nine tested positive. That means the program identified about one case per 85,000 travelers screened, the CDC reported Thursday in the agency's weekly report. This style of screening doesn't seem to work for a few reasons. Covid-19 has a wide range of nonspecific symptoms common to other infections, there are a high number of asymptomatic cases, travelers may deny symptoms or take steps to avoid detection and passenger data was limited. The CDC also only shared contact information with local health departments for 68% of the passengers it screened. There were data collection problems, the report said, and some states opted out of receiving the information. The CDC ended the program September 14. Instead, the CDC has concentrated on communicating more with travelers to promote recommended preventive measures. The agency has also enhanced the public health response capacity at ports of entry. The CDC said travelers and their local communities would be better protected if there was "more efficient" collection of contact information for international air passengers before they arrive and real-time data that could be sent to US health departments. Pre-departure testing within 72 hours before the trip and testing upon arrival would help, as would rules that would encourage a traveler to self-isolate for a certain period.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disney+, the streaming service that launched one year ago today, grew to 73.7 million paid subscribers as of early October. TechCrunch reports: That's according to The Walt Disney Company's fourth-quarter earnings report, which covers the company's finances through October 3. The company previously said Disney+ had 60.5 million subscribers as of August 3. The release also includes subscriber numbers for Disney's other streaming services -- Hulu had 36.6 million (including 4.1 million subscribers to Hulu + Live TV), while ESPN had 10.3 million (more than doubling from 3.5 million a year earlier). Overall, Disney's direct-to-consumer segment saw revenue grow 41% year-over-year to $4.9 billion, while its operating loss fell from $751 million in Q4 2019 to $580 million this year. Disney attributed the shrinking losses to "improved results at Hulu and ESPN+, partially offset by higher costs at Disney+, driven by the ongoing rollout." It was a tough quarter for Disney overall, with the pandemic forcing the company to keep some parks closed and the rest operating at reduced capacity. Disney's revenue fell to $14.7 billion (compared to $19.1 billion during Q4 2019), with a loss of $0.39 per share.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It was teased last month, and now it's official: PayPal is bringing its newly-announced support for cryptocurrency to all US accounts. Engadget reports: PayPal says all eligible users can start buying, selling and holding bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum and bitcoin cash. Beginning next year, PayPal also plans to bring cryptocurrency into Venmo and will allow users to pay merchants with their cryptocurrency holdings (the digital currency will be converted to fiat currency). The company hasn't detailed its plans to make cryptocurrency trading available in other countries, but says it will come to "select international markets in the first half of 2021."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

VICE has highlighted six reasons why Google Maps is the creepiest app on your phone. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: 1. Google Maps Wants Your Search History: Google's "Web & App Activity" settings describe how the company collects data, such as user location, to create a faster and "more personalized" experience. In plain English, this means that every single place you've looked up in the app -- whether it's a strip club, a kebab shop or your moped-riding drug dealer's location -- is saved and integrated into Google's search engine algorithm for a period of 18 months. Google knows you probably find this creepy. That's why the company uses so-called "dark patterns" -- user interfaces crafted to coax us into choosing options we might not otherwise, for example by highlighting an option with certain fonts or brighter colors. 2. Google Maps Limits Its Features If You Don't Share Your Search History: If you open your Google Maps app, you'll see a circle in the top right corner that signifies you're logged in with your Google account. That's not necessary, and you can simply log out. Of course, the log out button is slightly hidden, but can be found like this: click on the circle > Settings > scroll down > Log out of Google Maps. Unfortunately, Google Maps won't let you save frequently visited places if you're not logged into your Google account. If you choose not to log in, when you click on the search bar you get a "Tired of typing?" button, suggesting you sign in, and coaxing you towards more data collection. 3. Google Maps Can Snitch On You: Another problematic feature is the "Google Maps Timeline," which "shows an estimate of places you may have been and routes you may have taken based on your Location History." With this feature, you can look at your personal travel routes on Google Maps, including the means of transport you probably used, such as a car or a bike. The obvious downside is that your every move is known to Google, and to anyone with access to your account. And that's not just hackers -- Google may also share data with government agencies such as the police. [...] If your "Location History" is on, your phone "saves where you go with your devices, even when you aren't using a specific Google service," as is explained in more detail on this page. This feature is useful if you lose your phone, but also turns it into a bonafide tracking device. 4. Google Maps Wants to Know Your Habits: Google Maps often asks users to share a quick public rating. "How was Berlin Burger? Help others know what to expect," suggests the app after you've picked up your dinner. This feels like a casual, lighthearted question and relies on the positive feeling we get when we help others. But all this info is collected in your Google profile, making it easier for someone to figure out if you're visiting a place briefly and occasionally (like on holiday) or if you live nearby. 5. Google Maps Doesn't Like It When You're Offline: Remember GPS navigation? It might have been clunky and slow, but it's a good reminder that you don't need to be connected to the internet to be directed. In fact, other apps offer offline navigation. On Google, you can download maps, but offline navigation is only available for cars. It seems fairly unlikely the tech giant can't figure out how to direct pedestrians and cyclists without internet. 6. Google Makes It Seem Like This Is All for Your Own Good: "Providing useful, meaningful experiences is at the core of what Google does," the company says on its website, adding that knowing your location is important for this reason. They say they use this data for all kinds of useful things, like "security" and "language settings" -- and, of course, selling ads. Google also sells advertisers the possibility to evaluate how well their campaigns reached their target (that's you!) and how often people visited their physical shops "in an anonymized and aggregated manner". But only if you opt in (or you forget to opt out).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The first benchmark of Apple's M1 chip shows that the multi-core performance of the new MacBook Air with 8GB RAM beats out all of the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro models, including the 10th-generation high-end 2.4GHz Intel Core i9 model. "That high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro earned a single-core score of 1096 and a multi-core score of 6870," reports MacRumors. The MacBook Air with M1 chip and 8GB RAM features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. From the report: Though the M1 chip is outperforming the 16-inch MacBook Pro models when it comes to raw CPU benchmarks, the 16-inch MacBook Pro likely offers better performance in other areas such as the GPU as those models have high-power discrete GPUs. It's worth noting that there are likely to be some performance differences between the MacBook Pro and the "MacBook Air" even though they're using the same M1 chip because the "MacBook Air" has a fanless design and the MacBook Pro has an new Apple-designed cooling system. There's also a benchmark for the Mac mini, though, and it has about the same scores. The "Mac mini" with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067. There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core score of 1714 and a multi-core score of 6802. Like the "MacBook Air," it has a 3.2GHz base frequency. A few other "MacBook Air" benchmarks have surfaced too with similar scores, and the full list is available on Geekbench. [...] When compared to existing devices, the M1 chip in the "MacBook Air" outperforms all iOS devices. For comparison's sake, the iPhone 12 Pro earned a single-core score of 1584 and a multi-core score of 3898, while the highest ranked iOS device on Geekbench's charts, the A14 iPad Air, earned a single-core score of 1585 and a multi-core score of 4647.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook's ban on political ads, which was initially projected to last just one week, is being extended for at least another month. The decision is aimed at limiting the misinformation that's spreading rampantly over its platform in the wake of the U.S. election. The Guardian reports: "We are keeping the ad pause and other temporary election protection measures in place as that result moves towards certification next month," said Rob Leathern, director of product management at Facebook. "We are keeping the ad pause and other temporary election protection measures in place as that result moves towards certification next month," said Rob Leathern, director of product management at Facebook. "We know that people are disappointed that we can't immediately enable ads for runoff elections in Georgia and elsewhere," Leathern added. "It's taken years to build the infrastructure that supports the Facebook Ad Library and ensure that political ads are transparent. We do not have the technical ability in the short term to enable political ads by state or by advertiser, and we are also committed to giving political advertisers equal access to our tools and services." With political adverts banned across the US, neither Democrats nor Republicans can take advantage of Facebook in their campaigns in Georgia, where both Senate seats are up for grabs on 5 January in a pair of runoff elections. According to Facebook's own research, the ban is likely to hurt Democrats slightly more, as the company says advertising on its site provides, on average, a proportional advantage to challengers against incumbents. Google is also continuing its political advertising ban, though it hasn't given a definite end date to the suspension.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica : In 2008, researcher Dan Kaminsky revealed one of the more severe Internet security threats ever: a weakness in the domain name system that made it possible for attackers to send users en masse to imposter sites instead of the real ones belonging to Google, Bank of America, or anyone else. With industrywide coordination, thousands of DNS providers around the world installed a fix that averted this doomsday scenario. Now, Kaminsky's DNS cache poisoning attack is back. Researchers on Wednesday presented a new technique that can once again cause DNS resolvers to return maliciously spoofed IP addresses instead of the site that rightfully corresponds to a domain name. On Wednesday, researchers from Tsinghua University and the University of California, Riverside presented a technique that, once again, makes cache poisoning feasible. Their method exploits a side channel that identifies the port number used in a lookup request. Once the attackers know the number, they once again stand a high chance of successfully guessing the transaction ID. The side channel in this case is the rate limit for ICMP, the abbreviation for the Internet Control Message Protocol. To conserve bandwidth and computing resources, servers will respond to only a set number of requests from other servers. After that, servers will provide no response at all. Until recently, Linux always set this limit to 1,000 per second. To exploit this side channel, the new spoofing technique floods a DNS resolver with a high number of responses that are spoofed so they appear to come from the name server of the domain they want to impersonate. Each response is sent over a different port. When an attacker sends a response over the wrong port, the server will send a response that the port is unreachable, which drains the global rate limit by one. When the attacker sends a request over the right port, the server will give no response at all, which doesn't change the rate limit counter. If the attacker probes 1,000 different ports with spoofed responses in one second and all of them are closed, the entire rate limit will be drained completely. If, on the other hand, one out of the 1,000 ports is open, then the limit will be drained to 999. Subsequently, the attacker can use its own non-spoofed IP address to measure the remaining rate limit. And if the server responds with one ICMP message, the attacker knows one of the previously probed 1,000 ports must be open and can further narrow down to the exact port number. Linux kernel developers responded by introducing a change that causes the rate limit to randomly fluctuate between 500 and 2,000 per second, preventing the new technique from working. Cloudflare also introduced a fix where its DNS service will fall back to TCP, "which is much more difficult to spoof," reports Ars. The researchers' press release is available here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Commerce Department said Thursday that it won't enforce its order that would have effectively forced the Chinese-owned TikTok video-sharing app to shut down, citing a federal court ruling in Philadelphia. From a report: The department's action delays implementation of a regulation, set to take effect Thursday, that would have barred U.S. companies such as Apple from offering TikTok as a mobile app, and companies including Amazon.com and Alphabet from offering web-hosting service for TikTok -- moves that would effectively make it inoperable. In making its decision, the Commerce Department cited a preliminary injunction against the shutdown last month by U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia in a suit brought by three TikTok stars: comedian Douglas Marland, fashion guru Cosette Rinab and musician Alex Chambers. The Commerce Department statement said that the shutdown order won't go into effect "pending further legal developments." In the Philadelphia case, Judge Beetlestone said the government action "presents a threat to the 'robust exchange of informational materials'" and therefore likely exceeds the government's authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the law the Trump administration has relied on to take action against TikTok. Two other court cases are pending. TikTok has filed its own request for an injunction for the shutdown in a case before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung LSI today announced the new Exynos 1080 SoC (system on chip), a successor to last year's Exynos 980. This year's 1080 is seemingly positioned a little above the 980 in terms of performance as we're seeing some quite notable gains in features compared to the 980. From a report: It's to be remembered that this is a "premium" SoC, meaning it's not a flagship SoC, but it's also not quite a mid-range SoC, fitting itself in-between those two categories, a niche which has become quite popular over the last 1-2 years. The new SoC is defined by having a new 1+3+4 CPU configuration, as reasonably large GPU, and full 5G connectivity integrated, and is the first publicly announced SoC to be manufactured on Samsung's new 5LPE process node. On the CPU side of things, this is the first time we've seen Samsung adopt a 1+3+4 CPU configuration, now adopting the Cortex-A78 architecture on the part of the performance cores. One core is clocked at 2.8GHz while the three others are running at 2.6GHz. Qualcomm had first introduced such a setup and it seems it's become quite popular as it gives the benefit of both performance and power efficiency. The four big cores are accompanied by four Cortex-A55 cores at 2.0GHz.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Swiss intelligence service has known since at least 1993 that Switzerland-based encryption device maker Crypto AG was actually a front for the CIA and its German counterpart, according to a new report released by the Swiss Parliament, but Swiss leaders were in the dark until last year. From a report: Switzerland's intra-governmental information gap is unlikely to be welcome news in Europe, which already looks warily upon the U.S.' expansive surveillance practices. Still, Crypto AG provided information of incalculable value to U.S. policymakers over many decades. Crypto AG was controlled from 1970 on by the CIA and the West German BND intelligence agency. It sold encryption devices -- often employed in diplomatic communications -- that were used by over 120 countries through the 2000s.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese President Xi Jinping personally made the decision to halt the initial public offering of Ant Group, which would have been the world's biggest, after controlling shareholder Jack Ma infuriated government leaders, WSJ reported Thursday, citing Chinese officials with knowledge of the matter. From the report: The rebuke was the culmination of years of tense relations between China's most celebrated entrepreneur and a government uneasy about his influence and the rapid growth of the digital-payments behemoth he controlled. Mr. Xi, for his part, has displayed a diminishing tolerance for big private businesses that have amassed capital and influence -- and are perceived to have challenged both his rule and the stability craved by factions in the country's newly assertive Communist Party. In a speech on Oct. 24, days before the financial-technology giant was set to go public, Mr. Ma cited Mr. Xi's words in what top government officials saw as an effort to burnish his own image and tarnish that of regulators, these people said. At the event in Shanghai, Mr. Ma, the country's richest man, quoted Mr. Xi saying, "Success does not have to come from me." As a result, the tech executive said, he wanted to help solve China's financial problems through innovation. Mr. Ma bluntly criticized the government's increasingly tight financial regulation for holding back technology development, part of a long-running battle between Ant and its overseers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple on Thursday released the latest version of macOS: macOS Big Sur (also known as macOS 11.0), which is available to download now -- assuming you have a compatible Mac. From a report: Big Sur is one of the biggest updates to Apple's laptop and desktop software in years, featuring a top-to-bottom redesign of the interface, icons, and menu bar, a new control center UI borrowed from iOS, widgets (also borrowed from iOS), and a variety of other improvements (see here for the full list). It's such a big change that Apple is actually moving on from the OS X / OS 10 branding that it's been using for Macs for almost 20 years. Apple's also adding some new privacy-focused features, including better tracking information in Safari and new privacy data in the Mac App Store for any apps you download. ArsTechnica has published a comprehensive review of the new operating system. An excerpt from their conclusion: The Good The bright, fresh visual style mostly looks pretty good. The Control Center (and other changes to the upper-right section of the Menu Bar) are genuinely useful additions. The Messages app finally catches up to its iOS/iPadOS counterpart, thanks to Catalyst. The APFS version of Time Machine seems like an improvement, though we'll need to wait to see what its long-term reliability is like. Aside from the old AFP file-sharing protocol and the Network Utility, Big Sur doesn't remove too many things or add many new security settings that will break apps. There may be some visual issues, but my experience has actually been that Apple breaks a lot fewer apps moving from Catalina to Big Sur than it did moving from Mojave to Catalina. The Bad A general reduction in contrast makes it harder to discern the difference between many buttons and controls at a glance. If you want to fix any of these contrast issues in the Accessibility settings, it should be possible to increase contrast or reduce transparency in certain places without making it an all-or-nothing setting. Some of the new buttons and icons are nice. Some of them are less nice. Big Sur on Apple Silicon Macs will give up the ability to run Windows in a virtual machine or on a separate partition, though Intel Macs can still do both things. The Ugly As usual, Apple is just a year or two more aggressive about dropping support for old Macs than I think they really need to be.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python programming language, today announced that he has unretired and joined Microsoft's Developer Division. From a report: Van Rossum, who was last employed by Dropbox, retired last October after six and a half years at the company. Clearly, that retirement wasn't meant to last. At Microsoft, van Rossum says, he'll work to "make using Python better for sure (and not just on Windows)." A Microsoft spokesperson told us that the company also doesn't have any additional details to share but confirmed that van Rossum has indeed joined Microsoft. "We're excited to have him as part of the Developer Division. Microsoft is committed to contributing to and growing with the Python community, and Guido's on-boarding is a reflection of that commitment," the spokesperson said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Singapore is rolling out the red carpet for top talent, launching a program to initially attract 500 individuals with a proven track record of contributing to the global technology ecosystem. From a report: Under the so-called Tech.Pass program, qualified individuals will be able to secure a new type of visa allowing them to start and operate more than one company and become an investor, consultant or mentor for local startups, according to the Economic Development Board. This offers more flexibility than current government regulations, which require companies to sponsor an employment pass for talent they want to bring in. The two-year visa isn't designed for mid-tier tech workers who might compete with locals for jobs, a political issue that has prompted the government to tighten its framework for issuing employment passes to foreigners this year. It's targeted at highly accomplished entrepreneurs and technical experts who can bring in capital, networks and knowhow, as Singapore aims to become the region's technology and innovation hub.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.