Starting in December, Facebook users in the U.K., France and Germany will no longer see a dedicated section for news articles. CNBC reports: Meta said Tuesday that it is plans to "deprecate" the Facebook News tab in early December for users in those European countries as "part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most." The company added that it plans to spend more time and money on short-form video, as best exemplified by its TikTok-like Reels product.

News represents less than 3% of what people see in their Facebook feeds, Meta said. Meta said it would honor the Facebook News obligations it had made to publishers in those countries, but said it won't enter into new deals and has no plans to offer new products for news publishers. In June, Meta removed all news content from Facebook and Instagram for users in Canada, following the passage of a bill requiring big tech companies to compensate news businesses when their content is made available on their services.

America's return-to-office has been a "lagging return," reports the Washington Post: Even with millions of workers across the country being asked to return to their cubicles, office occupancy has been relatively static for the past year. The country's top 10 metropolitan areas averaged 47.2 percent of pre-pandemic levels last week, according to data from Kastle Systems. This time last year, the average was around 44 percent....

About 52 percent of remote-capable U.S. workers are operating under hybrid arrangements, according to data from Gallup, while 29 percent are exclusively remote. And though executives like Meta's Mark Zuckerberg have argued that the rise of flexible work has had a deleterious effect on productivity, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that labor productivity rose 3.7 percent in the second quarter of 2023 and is up 1.3 percent compared to this time last year.

While employers cite the collaborative benefits of spending time together in person, the majority of hybrid arrangements aren't fostering the connections bosses want to see, according to Rob Cross, associate professor of management at Babson College who studies collaboration across various companies through surveys, email and meeting data. He's found that mandates for a certain number of days in office are missing the mark, "because you're not getting the right people who need to collaborate... What we're seeing that's more successful is when companies are using some form of analytics" to determine which workers need to come in on the same days, Cross said. He estimates that only about 5 percent of organizations are taking this approach. "Leaders are just saying, 'We need water-cooler moments,' " Cross said. "They're not looking and saying, 'These are the interactions we need to stimulate.' "
But the article argues that "After more than two years of trying to coax workers back into offices, bosses are losing their patience... Even tech companies that were once champions of remote work are changing their tune." The article cites return-to-office policies at Zoom, Meta, and Amazon, arguing that "Employers have new leverage as the labor market has cooled, leaving workers less room to be choosy..." The days of enticing employees with free food, laundry services and yoga classes are largely over. Now, executives are resorting to threats — and it's forcing some workers to decide whether they're willing to give up the flexibility they've gotten used to... "The pendulum has shifted from employees having all the power," said Matt Cohen, founder and managing partner of Ripple Ventures, a venture fund in Toronto that works with early stage companies across North America. The bulk of start-up founders he works with are requiring employees to be in offices a few days a week, although there's pushback. "During the pandemic, a lot of salespeople were taking calls from the top of mountains on hiking trips," Cohen said. "That's not working anymore...."

[R]emote work is becoming harder to find. Roughly 8 percent of all job postings now advertise remote or hybrid work, according to Nick Bunker, director of North American economic research at Indeed Hiring Lab. That's down from 9.7 percent last year, he said, but still up significantly over pre-pandemic levels.
The workplace software company HqO's chief executive says workers are after "elevated experiences they can't get at home". Their data shows workers attracted by free food, high-quality tools, and attractive workspaces — but "The number one thing people want out of a workplace is concentration space..You're not going to get them into a place just built for social interaction. You've got to be able to concentrate...."

But the CEO of PR software company Muck Rack says going fully remote benefited their workers — both their well-being and their productivity. "I hope more people see the potential here and don't just go along with the return-to-office narrative.

"Silicon Valley billionaires behind a secretive $800 million land-buying spree in Northern California have finally released some details about their plans for a new green city," reports the Associated Press, "but they still must win over skeptical voters and local leaders." After years of ducking scrutiny, Jan Sramek, the former Goldman Sachs trader spearheading the effort, launched a website Thursday about "California Forever." The site billed the project as "a chance for a new community, good paying local jobs, solar farms, and open space" in Solano, a rural county between San Francisco and Sacramento that is now home to 450,000 people. He also began meeting with key politicians representing the area who have been trying unsuccessfully for years to find out who was behind the mysterious Flannery Associates LLC as it bought up huge swaths of land, making it the largest single landholder in the county...

[T]o build anything resembling a city on what is now farmland, the group must first convince Solano County voters to approve a ballot initiative to allow for urban uses on that land, a protection that has been in place since 1984. Local and federal officials still have questions about the group's intentions... California is in dire need of more housing, especially affordable homes for teachers, firefighters, service and hospitality workers. But cities and counties can't figure out where to build as established neighborhoods argue against new homes that they say would congest their roads and spoil their quiet way of life.

In many ways, Solano County is ideal for development. It is 60 miles northeast of San Francisco and 35 miles southwest of California's capital city of Sacramento. Solano County homes are among the most affordable in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a median sales price of $600,000 last month. But Princess Washington, mayor pro tempore of Suisun City, said residents deliberately decided to protect open space and keep the area around Travis Air Force Base free of encroachment given its significance. She's suspicious that the group's real purpose is "to create a city for the elite" under the guise of more housing.
The web site for "California Forever" acknowledges they've purchased 50,000 acres — about 78 squares miles — "strategically located" in Northern California's Solano County with access to water and low fire risk.

Speculative illustrations on the site "evoke a cityscape with a dreamy white stucco and red rooftop Mediterranean vibe that might be found in a Greek or Italian village," writes the San Francisco Chronicle. There are hillside neighborhoods stepping down to what must be the banks of the Sacramento River, kayakers tooling through lily pads and anglers fishing from the riverbank at sunrise... The website also names an investor who has not been named previously — venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, an early investor in Google, Slack and other companies...

While California Forever may have billions to invest in the project, it will face staunch opposition from some ranchers who argue that the city would disrupt the economy of a county that is 62% farmland.
The San Francisco Chronicle's urban design critic writes "OK, this is something new — an elevator pitch for a whole new city..." But the website launched Thursday by California Forever offers no real details, such as the projected population or precise location. Instead, there are renderings of cuddly townscapes and soothing talk of building "a remarkable place for Solano residents." Oh, and an earnest promise to "begin the phase of our work that matters most: our conversation with you." Let the eye-rolling commence. It's impossible to critique the vision of the investors, because what was unfurled is so innocuous as to be an insult...

The website also refers to how this will be a center of "economic opportunity" and "new employers." Great! But only two of the 12 renderings show people at work, including one where three men install solar panels while the sun sets in the west. Let's hope they're being paid overtime... The Bay Area needs housing and jobs. It also needs honest approaches to making this happen. Let's hope when California Forever 2.0 launches, there is less fluff and more facts.

Spotify is cracking down on white-noise podcasters, reducing the advertising support for programmers that provide little more than soothing sounds like rain or chirping birds. From a report: In an email to creators Friday, the company highlighted changes to its Ambassador Ads program -- promotional spots for Spotify that podcasters read. The company pays hosts to read ads to encourage more creators to make shows and join the platform. As part of the change taking effect Oct. 1, white noise podcasters will no longer be eligible for such support, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The company is also raising the audience threshold that conventional podcasters must meet to qualify for those ads to 1,000 unique Spotify listeners over the past 60 days from 100.

According to a new report by The Wall Street Journal, mobile carriers including Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are all requiring customers to switch to a debit card or bank account withdrawal in order to receive an autopay discount on their plan. Verizon has included this requirement for years, but in the past few months the other two carriers have quietly added it too. The Verge reports: The new rule goes into effect for AT&T customers on October 2nd, and as a gesture of goodwill, the company will only reduce your discount if you continue to pay with a credit card. Those who register for autopay with a bank or debit card will receive $10 off; a credit card will only get you $5. T-Mobile's change went into effect in July, also eliminating Apple Pay and Google Pay as methods eligible for the $5 discount. Oh, and technically, you can qualify for Verizon's autopay discount with a credit card -- it just has to be a Verizon Visa card.

AT&T and T-Mobile aren't just making this a requirement for new customers -- the change is being applied to all postpaid accounts. Even if you've been receiving the discount for years with a credit card, you'll have to make the switch in order to keep your discount. And it adds up -- the discounts are applied for each line on your plan, so if your whole family is on the same plan, it's a significant amount of money.

samleecole writes: A genre of AI-generated books on Amazon is scaring foragers and mycologists: cookbooks and identification guides for mushrooms aimed at beginners.

Amazon has an AI-generated books problem that's been documented by journalists for months. Many of these books are obviously gibberish designed to make money. But experts say that AI-generated foraging books, specifically, could actually kill people if they eat the wrong mushroom because a guidebook written by an AI prompt said it was safe.

The New York Mycological Society (NYMS) warned on social media that the proliferation of AI-generated foraging books could "mean life or death."

A quick scan of Amazon's mushroom and foraging books revealed a bunch of books likely written by ChatGPT, but are sold without any indication that they're AI-generated and are marketed as having been written by a human when they're probably not. 404 Media used GPT text detectors and AI image detection tools on some of the suspicious books, and found that they were very likely made with AI, with authors who may not even exist.

"The green energy revolution still faces a huge obstacle: a lack of long-term, cost-efficient renewable storage," writes the Washington Post.

But then they check in on a Finnish start-up running the world's first commercial-scale sand battery, which uses solar panels and wind turbines to heat sand-filled vats (up to 1,000 degrees) to back up district heating networks: The sand can hold onto the power for weeks or months at a time — a clear advantage over the lithium ion battery, the giant of today's battery market, which usually can hold energy for only a number of hours.

Unlike fossil fuels, which can be easily transported and stored, solar and wind supplies fluctuate. Most of the renewable power that isn't used immediately is lost. The solution is storage innovation, many industry experts agree. In addition to their limited capacity, lithium ion batteries, which are used to power everything from mobile phones to laptops to electric vehicles, tend to fade with every recharge and are highly flammable, resulting in a growing number of deadly fires across the world. The extraction of cobalt, the lucrative raw material used in lithium ion batteries, also relies on child labor. U.N. agencies have estimated that 40,000 boys and girls work in the industry, with few safety measures and paltry compensation. These serious environmental and human rights challenges pose a problem for the electric vehicle industry, which requires a huge supply of critical minerals.

So investors are now pouring money into even bigger battery ventures. More than $900 million has been invested in clean storage technologies since 2021, up from $360 million the year before, according to the Long Duration Energy Storage Council, an organization launched after that year's U.N. climate conference to oversee the world's decarbonization. The group predicts that by 2040, large-scale, renewable energy storage investments could reach $3 trillion. That includes efforts to turn natural materials into batteries. Once-obscure start-ups, experimenting with once-humble commodities, are suddenly receiving millions in government and private funding. There's the multi-megawatt CO2 battery in Sardinia, a rock-based storage system in Tuscany, and a Swiss company that's moving massive bricks along a 230-foot tall building to store and generate renewable energy. One Danish battery start-up, which stores energy from molten salt, is sketching out plans to deploy power plants in decommissioned coal mines across three continents...

But in order to succeed, natural batteries will need to provide the same kind of steady power as fossil fuels, at scale. Whether that can be achieved remains to be seen, say energy experts. And the industry may be subject to the same pitfalls that loom over the renewables energy sector at large: Projects will need to be constructed from scratch, and they might only be adopted in developed countries that can afford such experimentation. Lovschall-Jensen, the CEO of a Danish molten salt-based storage start-up called Hyme, says the challenge will be maintaining the same standards to which the modern world has become accustomed: receiving power, on demand, with the flip of a switch.

He believes that natural batteries, though still in their infancy, can serve that goal.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A buzzy startup offering financial infrastructure to crypto companies has found itself bankrupt primarily because it can't gain access to a physical crypto wallet with $38.9 million in it. The company also did not write down recovery phrases, locking itself out of the wallet forever in something it has called "The Wallet Event" to a bankruptcy judge. Prime Trust pitches itself as a crypto fintech company designed to help other startups offer crypto retirement plans, know-your-customer interfaces, ensure liquidity, and a host of other services. It says it can help companies build crypto exchanges, payment platforms, and create stablecoins for its clients. The company has not had a good few months. In June, the state of Nevada filed to seize control of the company because it was near insolvency. It was then ordered to cease all operations by a federal judge because it allegedly used customers' money to cover withdrawal requests from other companies.

The company filed for bankruptcy, and, according to a filing by its interim CEO, which you really should read in full, the company offers an "all-in-one solution for customers that remains unmatched in the marketplace." A large problem, among more run-of-the-mill crypto economy problems such as "lack of operational and spending oversight" and "regulatory issues," is the fact that it lost access to a physical wallet it was keeping a tens of millions of dollars in, and cannot get back into it. [...] For several years, the company then took customer deposits into this address, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. In December, 2021, "when a customer requested a significant withdrawal of ETH that the company could not fulfill [from other wallets,]" it went to withdraw it from this hardware wallet. "It was around this time that they discovered that the Company did not have the Wallet Access Devices and thus, could not access the cryptocurrency stored in the 98f Wallet."

The company then, for several months, had to "use $76,367,247.90 in the aggregate to purchase ETH to fund customer withdrawals." The money stuck in the wallet is currently worth $38.9 million as of August 22, it claimed. It is worth mentioning that the company did not tell regulators or customers about this issue for months after it discovered the problem. The company has still not solved this issue: "The Company remains unable to access the 98f Wallet," it wrote. "The investigation continues." Prime Trust swears in its filing that this was an "aberrant" event and "extremely unlikely to occur again."

Jay Powell has warned that inflation "remains too high," raising the prospect of further interest rate increases in the world's largest economy should price pressures persist. Financial Times: In a highly anticipated speech on Friday, the chair of the US Federal Reserve at times struck a hawkish tone, pointing to the central bank's readiness to maintain a "restrictive" policy to bring inflation down to its 2 per cent target. "Although inflation has moved down from its peak -- a welcome development -- it remains too high," Powell said at the Fed's annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. "We are prepared to raise rates further if appropriate, and intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we are confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward our objective," he added.

But he tempered that message with a pledge to proceed "carefully" as the Fed navigates the final stages of its campaign to stamp out the worst inflation shock in decades. Headline US inflation, according to the consumer price index, was 3.2 per cent for July, well down from its peak of 9.1 per cent, but above June's rate of 3 per cent. Powell said the Fed was now focused not only on the risk of tightening monetary policy too little and allowing inflation to become entrenched but also of raising rates too high. "Doing too much could also do unnecessary harm to the economy," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Epic Games will let developers keep 100 percent of their net revenues from the Epic Games Store for six months if they choose to make their games or apps exclusives for that time through its new First Run program, the company announced on Wednesday. Typically, Epic lets developers keep 88 percent of their revenues, with the company taking a 12 percent cut. For developers who launch a product through First Run, the split will return to 88 / 12 once the six months are up.

Developers who choose to participate in the Epic First Run program will see a few other benefits as well. Epic says First Run games and apps will be presented to Store users with "new exclusive badging, homepage placements, and dedicated collections" and will be featured in "relevant store campaigns including sales, events, and editorial as applicable." The program is open now, and the first products that will be eligible to be part of the program must launch on or after October 16th. [...] However, developers can be a part of First Run and still release their products on their own stores. Here's what Epic says about which products are eligible: "A new release game or app which has not been previously released on another third-party PC store or included in a subscription service available on another third-party PC store. Games or apps with a pre-existing exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store are not eligible for the program."

Mastercard and crypto exchange Binance will end their four crypto card programmes in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Bahrain as of Sept. 22. From a report: The Binance cards allow users to make payments in traditional currencies, funded by their cryptocurrency holdings on the exchange. Mastercard's website also lists partnerships with crypto exchanges including Gemini. The decision will not impact any of Mastercard's other crypto card programmes, the spokesperson said. Binance is facing legal and regulatory challenges.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A newly discovered zeroday in the widely used WinRAR file-compression program has been under exploit for four months by unknown attackers who are using it to install malware when targets open booby-trapped JPGs and other innocuous inside file archives. The vulnerability, residing in the way WinRAR processes the ZIP file format, has been under active exploit since April in securities trading forums, researchers from security firm Group IB reported Wednesday. The attackers have been using the vulnerability to remotely execute code that installs malware from families including DarkMe, GuLoader, and Remcos RAT. From there, the criminals withdraw money from broker accounts. The total amount of financial losses and total number of victims infected is unknown, although Group-IB said it has tracked at least 130 individuals known to have been compromised. WinRAR developers fixed the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-38831, earlier this month. "By exploiting a vulnerability within this program, threat actors were able to craft ZIP archives that serve as carriers for various malware families," Group-IB Malware Analyst Andrey Polovinkin wrote. "Weaponized ZIP archives were distributed on trading forums. Once extracted and executed, the malware allows threat actors to withdraw money from broker accounts. This vulnerability has been exploited since April 2023."

It's recommended that you update to version 6.23 before using WinRAR again.

The G20 poured record levels of public money into fossil fuels last year despite having promised to reduce some of it, a report has found. The Guardian: The amount of public money flowing into coal, oil and gas in 20 of the world's biggest economies reached a record $1.4tn in 2022, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) thinktank, even though world leaders agreed to phase out âoeinefficientâ fossil fuel subsidies at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow two years ago. The report comes ahead of a meeting of G20 countries in Delhi next month that could set the tone for the next big climate conference, which takes place in the United Arab Emirates in November.

It is crucial that leaders put fossil fuel subsidies on the agenda, said Tara Laan, a senior associate with the IISD and lead author of the study. "These figures are a stark reminder of the massive amounts of public money G20 governments continue to pour into fossil fuels -- despite the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change." Fossil fuels release pollutants when burned that heat the planet and make extreme weather more violent. They also dirty the air with toxins that damage people's lungs and other organs. Scientists estimate the air pollution from fossil fuels kills between 1 and 10 million people each year. But beyond the overlooked costs to society, governments have lowered prices further by supporting fossil fuel producers and their customers with public money. The report found G20 governments last year provided fossil fuels $1tn in subsidies, $322bn in investments by state-owned enterprises and $50bn in loans from public finance institutions.

Two founders of Tornado Cash, the widely known Russian cryptocurrency mixer, have been charged with laundering more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds. From a report: In a newly unsealed indictment, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov have both been accused of sanctions violations and laundering money through Tornado Cash, including hundreds of millions of dollars for the Lazarus Group, a sanctioned North Korean state-backed hacking group. Charges in the indictment include conspiring to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. Storm was arrested Wednesday in Washington state, according to a statement from the Justice Department, but Semenov, a Russian national, remains at large. The third co-founder, Alexey Pertsev, who is not mentioned in this action, faces trial in Amsterdam over his involvement with Tornado Cash. "Roman Storm and Roman Semenov allegedly operated Tornado Cash and knowingly facilitated this money laundering," said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, adding, "While publicly claiming to offer a technically sophisticated privacy service, Storm and Semenov in fact knew that they were helping hackers and fraudsters conceal the fruits of their crimes." Further reading: Tornado Cash Co-founder Reports Being Kicked Off GitHub as Industry Reacts To Sanctions (2022);
Coinbase Employees and Ethereum Backers Sue US Treasury Over Tornado Cash Sanctions (2022).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A new proposed class-action lawsuit (as noticed by Bloomberg Law) accuses user-generated "metaverse" company Roblox of profiting from and helping to power third-party websites that use the platform's Robux currency for unregulated gambling activities. In doing so, the lawsuit says Roblox is effectively "work[ing] with and facilitat[ing] the Gambling Website Defendants... to offer illegal gambling opportunities to minor users." The three gambling website companies named in the lawsuit -- Satozuki, Studs Entertainment, and RBLXWild Entertainment -- allow users to connect a Roblox account and convert an existing balance of Robux virtual currency into credits on the gambling site. Those credits act like virtual casino chips that can be used for simple wagers on those sites, ranging from Blackjack to "coin flip" games.

If a player wins, they can transfer their winnings back to the Roblox platform in the form of Robux. The gambling sites use fake purchases of worthless "dummy items" to facilitate these Robux transfers, according to the lawsuit, and Roblox takes a 30 percent transaction fee both when players "cash in" and "cash out" from the gambling sites. If the player loses, the transferred Robux are retained by the gambling website through a "stock" account on the Roblox platform. In either case, the Robux can be converted back to actual money through the Developer Exchange Program. For individuals, this requires a player to be at least 13 years old, to file tax paperwork (in the US), and to have a balance of at least 30,000 Robux (currently worth $105, or $0.0035 per Robux).

The gambling websites also use the Developer Exchange Program to convert their Robux balances to real money, according to the lawsuit. And the real money involved isn't chump change, either; the lawsuit cites a claim from RBXFlip's owners that 7 billion Robux (worth over $70 million) was wagered on the site in 2021 and that the site's revenues increased 10 times in 2022. The sites are also frequently promoted by Roblox-focused social media influencers to drum up business, according to the lawsuit. Roblox's terms of service explicitly bar "experiences that include simulated gambling, including playing with virtual chips, simulated betting, or exchanging real money, Robux, or in-experience items of value." But the gambling sites get around this prohibition by hosting their games away from Roblox's platform of user-created "experiences" while still using Robux transfers to take advantage of players' virtual currency balances from the platform. In a statement, Roblox said that "these are third-party sites and have no legal affiliation to Roblox whatsoever. Bad actors make illegal use of Roblox's intellectual property and branding to operate such sites in violation of our standards."

The Biden administration on Monday continued its push toward internet-for-all by 2030, announcing about $667 million in new grants and loans to build more broadband infrastructure in the rural U.S. From a report: "With this investment, we're getting funding to communities in every corner of the country because we believe that no kid should have to sit in the back of a mama's car in a McDonald's parking lot in order to do homework," said Mitch Landrieu, the White House's infrastructure coordinator, in a call with reporters. The 37 new recipients represent the fourth round of funding under the program, dubbed ReConnect by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Another 37 projects received $771.4 million in grants and loans announced in April and June.

The money flowing through federal broadband programs, including what was announced Monday and the $42.5 billion infrastructure program detailed earlier this summer, will lead to a new variation on "the electrification of rural America," Landrieu said, repeating a common Biden administration refrain. The largest award went to the Ponderosa Telephone Co. in California, which received more than $42 million to deploy fiber networks in Fresno County. In total, more than 1,200 people, 12 farms and 26 other businesses will benefit from that effort alone, according to USDA.

The UK government will spend $127m to try to win a toe-hold for the nation in the global race to produce computer chips used to power artificial intelligence. From a report: Taxpayer money will be used as part of a drive to build a national AI resource in Britain, similar to those under development in the US and elsewhere. It is understood that the funds will be used to order key components from major chipmakers Nvidia, AMD and Intel. But an official briefed on the plans told the Guardian that the $127m offered by the government is far too low relative to investment by peers in the EU, US and China. The official confirmed, in a move first reported by the Telegraph, which also revealed the investment, that the government is in advanced stages of an order of up to 5,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia. The company, which started out building processing capacity for computer games, has seen a sharp increase in its value as the AI race has heated up. Its chips can run language learning models such as ChatGPT.

"Italian producers of parmesan cheese have been fighting against imitations for years," writes the Wall Street Journal, adding "Their latest trick to beat counterfeiters is edible microchips.

"Now, makers of Parmigiano-Reggiano, as the original parmesan cheese is officially called, are slapping the microchips on their 90-pound cheese wheels as part of an endless cat-and-mouse game between makers of authentic and fake products." New methods to guarantee the origin of products are being used across the EU. Some wineries are putting serial numbers, invisible ink and holograms on their bottles. So-called DNA fingerprinting of milk bacteria pioneered in Switzerland, which isn't in the EU, is now being tested inside the bloc as a method for identifying cheese. QR codes are also proliferating, including on individual portions of pre-sliced Prosciutto di San Daniele, a raw ham similar to Prosciutto di Parma. A smartphone can be used to show information such as how long the prosciutto has been aged and when it was sliced... The new silicon chips, made by Chicago-based p-Chip, use blockchain technology to authenticate data that can trace the cheese as far back as the producer of the milk used.

The chips have been in advanced testing on more than 100,000 Parmigiano wheels for more than a year. The consortium of producers wants to be sure the chips can stand up to Parmigiano's aging requirement, which is a minimum of one year and can exceed three years for some varieties... The p-Chips can withstand extreme heat or cold, can be read through ice and can withstand years of storage in liquid nitrogen. They have outperformed RFID chips, which are larger, can be more difficult to attach to products, are more fragile and can't survive extreme temperatures, according to p-Chip Chief Technology Officer Bill Eibon. Parmigiano producers also use QR codes, but the codes are easily copied and degrade during the cheese's aging process.

A robot heats the Parmigiano wheel's casein label — a small plaque made of milk protein that is widely used in the cheese industry — and then inserts the chip on top. A hand-held reader can grab the data from the chips, which cost a few cents each and are similar to the ones that some people have inserted under the skin of their pets. The chips can't be read remotely. In lab tests, the chips sat for three weeks in a mock-up of stomach acid without leaking any dangerous material. Eibon went a step further, eating one without suffering any ill effects, but he isn't touting that lest p-Chip face accusations it is tracking people, something that isn't possible because the chips can't be read remotely and can't be read once they are ingested.

"We don't want to be known as the company accused of tracking people," said Eibon. "I ate one of the chips and nobody is tracking me, except my wife, and she uses a different method."
Merck KGaA will soon be using the same chips, the article points out, and the chips "are also being tested in the automotive industry to guarantee the authenticity of car parts.

"The chips could eventually be used on livestock, crops or medicine stored in liquid nitrogen."

A Bloomberg investigative reporter wrote a new book titled Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. This week Bloomberg published an excerpt that begins when the reporter received a flirtatious text message from a woman named Vicky Ho for a scam that's called "pig butchering".

"Vicky's random text had found its way to pretty much exactly the wrong target. I'd been investigating the crypto bubble for more than a year..." After a day, Vicky revealed her true love language: Bitcoin price data. She started sending me charts. She told me she'd figured out how to predict market fluctuations and make quick gains of 20% or more. The screenshots she shared showed that during that week alone she'd made $18,600 on one trade, $4,320 on another and $3,600 on a third... For days, she went on chatting without asking for me to send any money. I was supposed to be the mark, but I had to work her to con me.... Vicky sent me a link to download an app called ZBXS. It looked pretty much like other crypto-exchange apps. "New safe and stable trading market," a banner read at the top. Then Vicky gave me some instructions. They involved buying one cryptocurrency using another crypto-exchange app, then transferring the crypto to ZBXS's deposit address on the blockchain, a 42-character string of letters and numbers...

People around the world really were losing huge sums of money to the con. A project finance lawyer in Boston with terminal cancer handed over $2.5 million. A divorced mother of three in St. Louis was defrauded of $5 million. And the victims I spoke to all told me they'd been told to use Tether, the same coin Vicky suggested to me. Rich Sanders, the lead investigator at CipherBlade, a crypto-tracing firm, said that at least $10 billion had been lost to crypto romance scams.

The huge sums involved weren't the most shocking part. I learned that whoever was posing as Vicky was likely a victim as well — of human trafficking. Most "pig-butchering" operations were orchestrated by Chinese gangsters based in Cambodia or Myanmar. They'd lure young people from across Southeast Asia to move abroad with the promise of well-paying jobs in customer service or online gambling. Then, when the workers arrived, they'd be held captive and forced into a criminal racket. Thousands have been tricked this way. Entire office towers are filled with floor after floor of people sending spam messages around the clock, under threat of torture or death.

With the assistance of translators, I started video chatting with people who'd escaped...

I'd heard that [southwestern Cambodia's giant building complex] Chinatown alone held as many as 6,000 captive workers like "Vicky Ho."
Two of the workers interviewed "said they'd seen workers murdered." And another worker said Tether was used specifically because "It's more safe. We are afraid people will track us... It's untraceable."

The reporter's conclusion? "It was hard to see how this slave complex could exist without cryptocurrency."

Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a prototype pipeline for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that can "distill" binary executables into human-intelligible code so that it can be updated and deployed in "weeks, days, or hours, in some cases." The work is part of a five-year, $10 million project with the agency. The Register reports: After running an executable through the university's "distillation" process, software engineers should be able to examine the generated HAR, figure out what the code does, and make changes to add new features, patch bugs, or improve security, and turn the HAR back into executable code, says GT associate professor and project participant Brendan Saltaformaggio. This would be useful for, say, updating complex software that was written by a contractor or internal team, the source code is no longer or never was to hand and neither are its creators, and stuff needs to be fixed up. Reverse engineering the binary and patching in an update by hand can be a little hairy, hence DARPA's desire for something a bit more solid and automatic. The idea is to use this pipeline to freshen up legacy or outdated software that may have taken years and millions of dollars to develop some time ago.

Saltaformaggio told El Reg his team has the entire process working from start to finish, and with some level of stability, too. "DARPA sets challenges they like to use to test the capabilities of a project," he told us over the phone. "So far we've handled every challenge problem DARPA's thrown at us, so I'd say it's working pretty well." Saltaformaggio said his team's pipeline disassembles binaries into a graph structure with pseudo-code, and presented in a way that developers can navigate, and replace or add parts in C and C++. Sorry, Java devs and Pythonistas: Saltaformaggio tells us that there's no reason the system couldn't work with other programming languages, "but we're focused on C and C++. Other folks would need to build out support for that." Along with being able to deconstruct, edit, and reconstruct binaries, the team said its processing pipeline is also able to comb through HARs and remove extraneous routines. The team has also, we're told, baked in verification steps to ensure changes made to code within hardware ranging from jets and drones to plain-old desktop computers work exactly as expected with no side effects.