An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The New York Police Department (NYPD) and New York City's self-proclaimed computer geek of a mayor are urging resident car owners to equip their vehicles with an Apple AirTag. During a press conference on Sunday, Mayor Eric Adams announced the distribution of 500 free AirTags to New Yorkers, saying the technology would aid in reducing the city's surging car theft numbers. Adams held the press conference at the 43rd precinct in the Bronx, where he said there had been 200 instances of grand larceny of autos. An NYPD official said that in New York City, 966 Hyundais and Kias have been stolen this year thus far, already surpassing 2022's 819 total. The NYPD's public crime statistics tracker says there have been 4,492 vehicle thefts this year, a 13.3 percent increase compared to the same period last year and the largest increase among NYC's seven major crime categories.

Adams, as the city did when announcing litigation against Kia and Hyundai on April 7, largely blamed the rise in car thefts on Kia and Hyundai, which he said are "leading the way" in stolen car brands. Hyundais and Kias were the subjects of the Kia Challenge TikTok trend that encouraged people to jack said vehicles with a mere USB-A cable. The topic has graduated way beyond a social media fad and into a serious concern. [...] Adams was adamant grand larceny auto numbers were dragging the city's overall crime numbers up and urged New Yorkers to "participate" in the fight against car theft by using an AirTag. NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said users who report a stolen vehicle equipped with an AirTag will see the police use "drones, our StarChase technology & good old fashion police work to safely recover your stolen car."

"Help us help you, get an AirTag," he tweeted.

T-Mobile on Monday said it experienced a hack that exposed account PINs and other customer data in the company's second network intrusion this year and the ninth since 2018. From a report: The intrusion, which started on February 24 and lasted until March 30, affected 836 customers, according to a notification on the website of Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey. "The information obtained for each customer varied but may have included full name, contact information, account number and associated phone numbers, T-Mobile account PIN, social security number, government ID, date of birth, balance due, internal codes that T-Mobile uses to service customer accounts (for example, rate plan and feature codes), and the number of lines," the company wrote in a letter sent to affected customers. Account PINs, which customers use to swap out SIM cards and authorize other important changes to their accounts, were reset once T-Mobile discovered the breach on March 27.

The incident is the second hack to hit T-Mobile this year. It's the ninth since 2018, based on reporting by TechCrunch. In January, T-Mobile said "bad actors" abused its application programming in a way that allowed them to access the data of 37 million customers. The hack started on November 25, 2022, and wasn't discovered by T-Mobile until January 5, TechCrunch said. Data obtained in that incident included names, billing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, T-Mobile account numbers, and information such as the number of lines on accounts and plan features.

In response to a new law that requires porn sites to verify users' ages, Pornhub has completely disabled its websites for people located in Utah. From a report: As of today, anyone accessing Pornhub from a Utah-based IP address doesn't see the Pornhub homepage, but instead is met with a video of Cherie DeVille, adult performer and member of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, explaining that they won't be able to visit the site. "As you may know, your elected officials in Utah are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website," DeVille says. "While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: When you think of digital entertainment, your mind might turn first to online video-streaming services, such as Sling TV or YouTube TV, and video-on-demand services, including Netflix or Acorn TV. However, consultant Deloitte's 17th annual "Digital Media Trends" survey suggests traditional television shows and movies are no longer the only forms of entertainment. Younger generations, often called Gen Zs and Millennials, are increasingly turning to user-generated content (UGC) -- which relies on unpaid contributors rather than traditional media professionals -- and video games to find personal fulfillment, value, and meaning. These younger users are creating a vibrant, immersive, and social tapestry of experiences with UGC, video games, music, and social media all playing significant roles. And that move towards UGC and gaming could have big implications for everyone.

Deloitte's survey found that about a third (32%) of consumers view online experiences as meaningful substitutes for in-person interactions, with that proportion increasing to 50% among Gen Zs and Millennials. Almost half (48%) of these younger generations engage more with others on social media than in the physical world, and 40% of them socialize more in video games than offline. Of course, it's not only younger people who view online experiences as meaningful substitutes for in-person interactions. [...] Yet those born after 1981, the usual dividing line between Generation X and Millennials, are much more inclined to live their lives online.

The "Ben" in Ben & Jerry's "has gone from ice cream to cannabis with a social mission," reports the Chicago Tribune: Ben Cohen has started Ben's Best Blnz, a nonprofit cannabis line with a stated mission of helping to right the wrongs of the war on drugs. The company says on its website that 80% of its profits will go to grants for Black cannabis entrepreneurs while the rest will be equally divided between the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and the national Last Prisoner Project, which is working to free people incarcerated for cannabis offenses...

Ben's Best Blnz, or B3, says it licenses its formulas, packaging, trademarks, and marketing materials to for-profit businesses that pay a royalty. After expenses are deducted, the royalties are donated to the cause.

Last weekend around 2 a.m. Sunday, "Facebook's advertising system went haywire," reports Gizmodo, "overcharging customers and wasting money on ads that didn't work." Reports suggest Meta, the social network's parent company, charged some advertisers more than double what they agreed to pay, ranging from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meta briefly stopped showing ads on part of its network with practically zero communication to its millions of customers.

The company confirmed the bug happened and promised to follow its "normal refund process," but shared very little about what went wrong.
A Meta spokesperson described it as "a technical issue that has now been resolved" (adding that the glitch also appeared to a lesser extent on Instagram).

But Alex Golick, the CEO of marketing agency Intensify told CNBC it was the worst Facebook glitch he'd seen in the decade he's worked in digital advertising — with one client burning through 90% of its ad budget by 9 a.m. And his entire customer base had similar problems: Golick said that all those advertisers had essentially just wasted most of their money for the day, spending roughly triple the amount they normally would to acquire a customer. "The results were horrendous," Golick told CNBC...

For brands that are already lowering ad costs to manage through a sluggish economy and a mobile ad market that no longer allows for targeting based on user data, Facebook's miscue is more than just an unfortunate blip. In low-margin industries, where every dollar counts, it can turn a profitable weekend into a big loser, while also raising further questions about the reliability of Facebook's ad systems...

Data analytics and marketing firm Varos provided data showing that, of the more than 3,000 ecommerce and direct-to-consumer companies that use its technology, the software bug caused a majority of them to experience a rise in cost per thousand impressions, or what those in the industry call CPMs. About 36% of companies were "very significantly impacted" by the bug, meaning their CPMs at least doubled, Varos said...

Varos CEO Yarden Shaked the glitch resulted in a "bidding war for nothing." Data about the glitch provided by the advertising technology firm Proxima on 108 companies also revealed that these firms spent their "entire day's budget in the first few hours of the day," the company said...

A shocking number of organizations -- including banks and healthcare providers -- are leaking private and sensitive information from their public Salesforce Community websites, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. From the report: The data exposures all stem from a misconfiguration in Salesforce Community that allows an unauthenticated user to access records that should only be available after logging in. Salesforce Community is a widely-used cloud-based software product that makes it easy for organizations to quickly create websites. Customers can access a Salesforce Community website in two ways: Authenticated access (requiring login), and guest user access (no login required). The guest access feature allows unauthenticated users to view specific content and resources without needing to log in.

However, sometimes Salesforce administrators mistakenly grant guest users access to internal resources, which can cause unauthorized users to access an organization's private information and lead to potential data leaks. Until being contacted by this reporter on Monday, the state of Vermont had at least five separate Salesforce Community sites that allowed guest access to sensitive data, including a Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program that exposed the applicant's full name, Social Security number, address, phone number, email, and bank account number.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hacker News: Google on Wednesday said it obtained a temporary court order in the U.S. to disrupt the distribution of a Windows-based information-stealing malware called CryptBot and "decelerate" its growth. The tech giant's Mike Trinh and Pierre-Marc Bureau said the efforts are part of steps it takes to "not only hold criminal operators of malware accountable, but also those who profit from its distribution." CryptBot is estimated to have infected over 670,000 computers in 2022 with the goal of stealing sensitive data such as authentication credentials, social media account logins, and cryptocurrency wallets from users of Google Chrome. The harvested data is then exfiltrated to the threat actors, who then sell the data to other attackers for use in data breach campaigns. CryptBot was first discovered in the wild in December 2019.

The malware has been traditionally delivered via maliciously modified versions of legitimate and popular software packages such as Google Earth Pro and Google Chrome that are hosted on fake websites. [...] The major distributors of CryptBot, per Google, are suspected to be operating a "worldwide criminal enterprise" based out of Pakistan. Google said it intends to use the court order, granted by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, to "take down current and future domains that are tied to the distribution of CryptBot," thereby kneecapping the spread of new infections.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Imgur, a popular photo-uploading service that has been informally tied to Reddit since its 2009 founding, will remove two types of content from its platform starting next month: explicit or pornographic imagery, and images uploaded anonymously -- the latter with a lean on unused images, according to the company. While technically banned from Imgur for years through its community rules, adult content hasn't been actively removed (and is incredibly popular). Until now.

The move is also going to be disastrous for the continuity of the internet. Like Photobucket before it, Imgur has been widely used to host millions of photos that are linked to, embedded, or used elsewhere, and lots of these photos were uploaded by people who didn't bother to sign up for accounts. Imgur is especially popular as a host for Reddit, meaning the content of those old posts could suddenly disappear off the internet. The move will likely also break embeds in various forum posts and blog posts all over the internet, creating an unpleasant form of link rot. (The Archive Team, generally a harbinger of shuttering sites, is working on backing up this material, according to an announcement on Reddit.)

Brazilian court has ordered the nationwide suspension of the Telegram messaging app due to its parent company's failure to provide data on neo-Nazis operating on the platform, imposing a daily fine of approximately $198,000 until compliance is met. The action was taken as part of an investigation into neo-Nazi activity on social networks.

Agence France-Presse first reported the news.

Meta's head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, called into question the values of TikTok by invoking the anti-China rhetoric that's become a trademark of lawmakers that want to expel his company's rival from the US. From a report: "TikTok, a hugely successful, highly dynamic and innovative Chinese company, is able to operate in the United States, but companies like Meta are not able to operate our social media services in China," Clegg said in an interview Tuesday with Bloomberg TV. "So there is this issue of a kind of lack of a level playing field. And in the end, there's always an underlying issue of values: What values are the underpinning of new technologies?" TikTok, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, has said it's not a Chinese company and is walling off sensitive US operations to house all data and employees in America. The app also isn't available in China. Still, it hasn't been able to shake concerns about its ownership and whether that opens up the app for influence or data collection by the Chinese government.

Clegg's comments echo the hawkish sentiments that have swirled around China and TikTok's connection to the country. In the US, where the social media platform has amassed 150 million users every month, the company is facing a national security review and legislation that could limit its availability in the country. There are "pretty profound differences in values" in how China views technology and individual privacy, Clegg said, including the country's willingness to seal off most of its internet from access by foreign companies. This has also expanded to discussions about new artificial intelligence technologies where, he said, "Chinese authorities are already rushing to insert their values and the way in which those AI systems are developed."

In a blog post today, the Free Software Foundation is calling on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide free/libre tax-filing software for Americans to file their taxes, citing upcoming legislation that allocates funds for the agency to explore a government-operated gratis tax return system. "Many feel they have no other option than to use nonfree software or a Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS), giving up their freedom as well as their most private financial information to a third-party company, in order to file taxes," writes the FSF.

$15 million of the $80 billion that was approved for the IRS by the Inflation Reduction Act includes the promise to further explore an "electronic service to prepare and file tax returns directly with the IRS." To do so, the IRS intends to "study taxpayer preferences for products. The results of the study will inform if and how the IRS should design such a service." The FSF writes: Let's call on the IRS to make a website for filing your tax return which respects your freedom. This is your chance. Write to the new IRS commissioner Daniel Werfel with your message. [...] Look up the address of your state's tax filing institution and send your letter to this address. Post your letter on social media to inspire others to do the same.

The early user reviews for Snapchat's "My AI" feature are in -- and they're not good. From a report: Launched last week to global users after initially being a subscriber-only addition, Snapchat's new AI chatbot powered by OpenAI's GPT technology is now pinned to the top of the app's Chat tab where users can ask it questions and get instant responses. But following the chatbot's rollout to Snapchat's wider community, Snapchat's app has seen a spike in negative reviews amid a growing number of complaints shared on social media.

Over the past week, Snapchat's average U.S. App Store review was 1.67, with 75% of reviews being 1-star, according to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. For comparison, across Q1 2023, the Snapchat average U.S. App Store review was 3.05 with only 35% of reviews being 1-star. The number of daily reviews has also increased by 5 times over the last week, the firm noted.

The U.S. Supreme Court, exploring free speech rights in the social media era, on Monday agreed to consider whether the Constitution's First Amendment bars government officials from blocking their critics on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. From a report: The justices took up an appeal by two members of a public school board from the city of Poway in Southern California of a lower court's ruling in favor of school parents who sued after being blocked from Facebook pages and a Twitter account maintained by the officials. The justices also took up an appeal by a Michigan man of a lower court's ruling against him after he sued a city official in Port Huron who blocked him on Facebook following critical posts made by the plaintiff about the local government's COVID-19 response. At issue is whether a public official's social media activity can amount to governmental action bound by First Amendment limits on government regulation of speech.

When the U.S. Supreme Court decides in the coming months whether to weaken a powerful shield protecting internet companies, the ruling also could have implications for rapidly developing technologies like artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. From a report: The justices are due to rule by the end of June whether Alphabet's YouTube can be sued over its video recommendations to users. That case tests whether a U.S. law that protects technology platforms from legal responsibility for content posted online by their users also applies when companies use algorithms to target users with recommendations.

What the court decides about those issues is relevant beyond social media platforms. Its ruling could influence the emerging debate over whether companies that develop generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT from OpenAI, a company in which Microsoft is a major investor, or Bard from Alphabet's Google should be protected from legal claims like defamation or privacy violations, according to technology and legal experts. That is because algorithms that power generative AI tools like ChatGPT and its successor GPT-4 operate in a somewhat similar way as those that suggest videos to YouTube users, the experts added.

Cory Doctorow just wrote a new thriller "about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works," according to his publisher. Doctorow calls Red Team Blues "a book about the financial rot at the center of Silicon Valley... a kind of anti-finance finance thriller."

The publisher describes the book's hero as "a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. " He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He's as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he's a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike.

He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He's not famous, except to the people who matter. He's made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he's been paid pretty well. It's been a good life.

Now he's been roped into a job that's more dangerous than anything he's ever agreed to before — and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.
"I write when I'm anxious, and right now these are anxious times," Doctorow explained last month in Publisher's Weekly, describing what he'd learned about selling audiobooks without going through Amazon's service Audible. This time Cory got 4,080 backers to pledge $152,735 to fund an audiobook for Red Team Blues read by Wil Wheaton that his Kickstarter campaign stressed would be DRM-free. ("Every audiobook sold on Audible be wrapped in Amazon's Digital Rights Management technology, which is a felony for you to remove, even if the copyright holder asks you to. It's punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine!")

Red Team Blues is the first book in a new trilogy, and Cory is now making in-person appearances to promote the book — starting today (and tomorrow) at the LA Times Festival of Books at the University of Southern California. Tuesday he'll be in San Diego, and a week from Sunday he's appearing in San Francisco, before heading to Portland, Mountain View, Berkeley, and Gaithersburg Maryland.

The Washington Post reports on "a relatively young app called Beeper that pulls all your chats into one place." This is significant, the Post argues, because "we're better off if we have the freedom to pick up our digital lives and move on. Tech companies should feel terrified that you'll walk if they disappoint you..." If different people send you messages in Apple's Messages (a.k.a., iMessage), WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Slack, you don't have to check multiple apps to read and reply. Maybe the best promise of Beeper is that you can ditch your iPhone or Samsung phone for another company's device and keep your text messages...

Eric Migicovsky, Beeper's co-founder, told me that if you're pulling Apple Messages into Beeper, you need a Mac computer to upload a digital file. All chat apps have different limits on how much history you can access in the app.

There's also a wait list of about 170,000 people for Beeper. (Add yourself to the list here.) The app is free, but Beeper says it will start charging for a version with extra features.
To put this all in context, the Post's reporter remembers the hassle of using a cable to transfer a long history of iPhone messages to a new Google Pixel phone, complaining that Apple makes it more difficult than other companies to switch to a different kind of system. "Many of you are happy to live in Apple's world. Great! But if you want the option to leave at some point, try to limit your use of Apple apps when possible..."

They look ahead to next year, when the EU "will require large tech companies to make their products compatible with those of competitors" — though it's not clear how much change that will bring. In the meantime, the existence of a small company like Beeper "gives me hope that we don't have to rely on the kindness of technology giants to make it easier to move to a different phone or computer system... You deserve the option of a no-hassle tech divorce at a moment's notice."

Remember that U.S. Air National Guardsman who's suspected of leaking classified documents? The New York Times has discovered "a previously undisclosed chat group on Discord" where the same airman apparently also posted "sensitive information" including "secret intelligence on the Russian war effort," this time to a group with 600 members — and "months earlier than previously known," in February of 2022. The case against Airman Teixeira, 21, who was arrested on April 13, pertains to the leaking of classified documents on another Discord group of about 50 members, called Thug Shaker Central. There, he began posting sensitive information in October 2022, members of the group told The Times. His job as an information technology specialist at an Air Force base in Massachusetts gave him top secret clearance... The user claimed to be posting information from the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.

The additional information raises questions about why authorities did not discover the leaks sooner, particularly since hundreds more people would have been able to see the posts... The exposure of some of America's most closely guarded secrets has prompted criticism about how the Pentagon and intelligence agencies protect classified data, and whether there are weaknesses in both vetting people for security clearances and enforcing the mantra that access to secrets should only be given to people with a "need to know."

Unlike Thug Shaker Central, the second chat room was publicly listed on a YouTube channel and was easily accessed in seconds... Apparently eager to impress others in the group who questioned his analysis, he said: "I have a little more than open source info. Perks of being in a USAF intel unit," referring to the United States Air Force... At times, he appeared to be posting from the military base where he was stationed... Airman Teixeira also claimed that he was actively combing classified computer networks for material on the Ukraine war.

When one of the Discord users urged him not to abuse his access to classified intelligence, Teixeira replied: "too late...."
The Times says they learned about the larger chat room "from another Discord user."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Snapchat's AI chatbot is now opening up to a global audience, the company announced today at its Snap Partner Summit. Initially launched in February, the feature originally allowed Snapchat's paid subscribers to chat with an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI's GPT technology directly in its app. Now it will be available for free. To date, users have sent nearly 2 million messages per day using the chatbot, Snap noted. With today's global expansion, the feature is also being upgraded with new functionality, including the ability to add My AI to group chats, get recommendations for places on Snap Map and Lenses, and share Snaps with My AI and receive chat replies.

Later, My AI will be able to respond with unique "generative" Snaps back, instead of just chat replies, the company also said, to keep the visual conversation going. The idea to integrate AI into the Snapchat app was originally intended to give users another way to engage in the app while taking advantage of the growing consumer demand for ChatGPT-like experiences. The company suggested the feature could be used to do things like suggest birthday gift ideas for a BFF, plan a hiking trip, suggest dinner recipes or write a poem for a friend, among other things. [...] The feature, before today, was available only to Snapchat+ $3.99 per month subscription holders, which could be helping drive upgrades.

Cutting red tape and unleashing the free market was supposed to help strapped families. So far, it hasn't worked out that way. From a report: Austin is experiencing an unrivaled apartment boom. In 2021 the region including the Texas capital issued nearly 26,000 multifamily housing permits, about 11 units per 1,000 residents. That's more per capita than any large US metro area since 1996, when Las Vegas OK'd new apartments at only a slightly higher level, according to rental marketing firm Apartment List. By the same measure, which is based on an analysis of US census data, Austin topped the 50 largest US metropolitan areas in 9 of the last 10 years. Many, if not most, of these apartments are classified as luxury, depending on how you define it. (Some developments are likely using a bit of real estate puffery.) Buildings such as the Hanover have become a flashpoint in a fierce, often bitter debate raging in Texas, the US and around the world. It's about the best way to shelter this generation and the next, particularly in the most sought-after and expensive cities.

Academics, developers and people in their 20s and 30s -- particularly those most active on social media -- have reached an unusual level of consensus. Their solution, supported by a wealth of scholarly research, is simple and elegant: Loosen regulations, such as zoning, and build more homes of any kind -- cheap, modest and palatial. The shorthand for the movement has become "Build, build, build" or "Yes, in my backyard" -- Yimby, for short. It's a rejoinder to the "Not in my backyard," or Nimby, crowd, the hidebound folks who typically thwart construction. Texas is famous for its business-friendly ways, and David Ott is one of many embracing the Yimby approach. He oversees the Texas projects of Houston-based Hanover, which developed the building Young was showing on a recent March afternoon. He says Austin is getting overbuilt, so rents will indeed come down, especially in the suburbs. "It's simple supply and demand," he says.