An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Several US federal government agencies have been hit in a global cyberattack that exploits a vulnerability in widely used software, according to a top US cybersecurity agency. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency "is providing support to several federal agencies that have experienced intrusions affecting their MOVEit applications," Eric Goldstein, the agency's executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said in a statement on Thursday to CNN, referring to the software impacted. "We are working urgently to understand impacts and ensure timely remediation." It was not immediately clear if the hackers responsible for breaching the federal agencies were a Russian-speaking ransomware group that has claimed credit for numerous other victims in the hacking campaign.

Agencies were much quicker Thursday to deny they'd been affected by the hacking than to confirm they were. The Transportation Security Administration and the State Department said they were not victims of the hack. CISA Director Jen Easterly told MSNBC on Thursday that she was "confident" that there will not be "significant impacts" to federal agencies from the hacks because of the government's defensive improvements. But the news adds to a growing tally of victims of a sprawling hacking campaign that began two weeks ago and has hit major US universities and state governments. The hacking spree mounts pressure on federal officials who have pledged to put a dent in the scourge of ransomware attacks that have hobbled schools, hospitals and local governments across the US.

The new hacking campaign shows the widespread impact that a single software flaw can have if exploited by skilled criminals. The hackers -- a well-known group whose favored malware emerged in 2019 -- in late May began exploiting a new flaw in a widely used file-transfer software known as MOVEit, appearing to target as many exposed organizations as they could. The opportunistic nature of the hack left a broad swath of organizations vulnerable to extortion. Progress, the US firm that owns the MOVEit software, has also urged victims to update their software packages and has issued security advice.

Two men who helped run the once wildly popular pirating website Megaupload were each sentenced by a New Zealand court on Thursday to more than two years in prison. From a report: The sentencing of Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk ended an 11-year legal battle by the men to avoid extradition to the United States on more serious charges that included racketeering. The men last year struck a deal with prosecutors from New Zealand and the U.S. in which they pleaded guilty to being part of a criminal group and causing artists to lose money by deception. Meanwhile Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, is continuing to fight the U.S. charges and threat of extradition. He has said he expects his former colleagues to testify against him as part of the deal they struck.

U.S. prosecutors say Megaupload raked in at least $175 million -- mainly from people who used the site to illegally download songs, television shows and movies -- before the FBI shut it down in early 2012 and arrested Dotcom and other company officers. Ortmann was sentenced to 2 years and 7 months while van der Kolk was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months. Each had faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison but argued they should be allowed to serve their sentences in home detention.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed a bill prohibiting children under 18 from joining various social media platforms without parental consent. Similar legislation has been passed in Utah and Louisiana. The Verge reports: The bill, HB 18, requires social media companies to receive explicit consent from a minor's parent or guardian before they'd be allowed to create their own accounts starting in September of next year. It also forces these companies to prevent children from seeing "harmful" content -- like content related to eating disorders, substance abuse, or "grooming" -- by creating new filtering systems.

Texas' definition of a "digital service" is extremely broad. Under the law, parental consent would be necessary for kids trying to access nearly any site that collects identifying information, like an email address. There are some exceptions, including sites that primarily deliver educational or news content and email services. The Texas attorney general could sue companies found to have violated this law. The law's requirements to filter loosely defined "harmful material" and provide parents with control over their child's accounts mirror language in some federal legislation that has spooked civil and digital rights groups.

Like HB 18, the US Senate-led Kids Online Safety Act orders platforms to prevent minors from being exposed to content related to disordered eating and other destructive behaviors. But critics fear this language could encourage companies like Instagram or TikTok to overmoderate non-harmful content to avoid legal challenges. Overly strict parental controls could also harm kids in abusive households, allowing parents to spy on marginalized children searching for helpful resources online.

Microsoft is starting to sell replacement components for its Surface devices. The software giant now supplies replacement parts in the Microsoft Store, allowing Surface owners to replace their displays, batteries, SSDs, and more. From a report: "We are excited to offer replacement components to technically inclined consumers for out-of-warranty, self repair," says Tim McGuiggan, VP of devices services and product engineering at Microsoft. "When purchasing a replacement component, you will receive the part and relevant collateral components (such as screws if applicable)." Tools to help you repair a Microsoft Surface device are sold separately by iFixit, which Microsoft partnered with in 2021 to sell official Surface repair tools. iFixit supplies tools like battery covers to protect against punctures during repair, debonding cradles to help cut the adhesive that holds screen glass in place, and a tool to properly replace a screen.

A U.S. judge has granted the FTC request to temporarily block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, scheduling a hearing for a preliminary injunction and preventing the deal from closing until a court ruling is made. Reuters reports: U.S. District Judge Edward Davila scheduled a two-day evidentiary hearing on the FTC's request for a preliminary injunction for June 22-23 in San Francisco. Without a court order, Microsoft could have closed on the $69 billion deal as early as Friday. Davila said the temporary restraining order "is necessary to maintain the status quo while the complaint is pending (and) preserve this court's ability to order effective relief in the event it determines a preliminary injunction is warranted and preserve the FTC's ability to obtain an effective permanent remedy in the event that it prevails in its pending administrative proceeding."

Microsoft and Activision must submit legal arguments opposing a preliminary injunction by June 16; the FTC must reply on June 20. Davila said the bar on closing will remain in place until at least five days after the court rules on the preliminary injunction request. The case reflects the muscular approach to antitrust enforcement taken by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

New York City's food delivery workers will be guaranteed a minimum wage for the first time under new regulations announced by Mayor Eric Adams. Gothamist reports: Tens of thousands of delivery workers are slated to make at least $17.96 per hour plus tips by July 12, and at least $19.96 an hour by 2025, city officials said. That's a sharp increase from what delivery workers make now. Many take home less than the city's minimum wage of $15 an hour. The $19.96 hourly rate is less than the $23.82 the Department of Consumer and Worker Protections originally proposed last November -- but is still almost three times more than what delivery workers currently make, according to the city agency.

Sunday's announcement comes after months of back-and-forth between delivery workers, elected officials and app companies over the minimum wage rates. City officials blew past a Jan. 1 deadline set by City Council legislation to establish the new wage rules. Delivery companies, like Uber and DoorDash, argued that the new legislation will force a raise in prices and less schedule flexibility, while some advocates claim these companies are manipulating employees into testifying against the measure. DoorDash spokesperson Eli Scheinholtz said the company was considering litigation against the city over the new pay rules. "The ones that bring you pizza in the snow, and that Thai food you like in the rain," said Mayor Adams. "This new minimum pay rate will guarantee these workers, and their families, can earn a living. They should not be delivering food to your household, if they can't put food on the plate in their household."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers have devised a novel attack that recovers the secret encryption keys stored in smart cards and smartphones by using cameras in iPhones or commercial surveillance systems to video record power LEDs that show when the card reader or smartphone is turned on. The attacks enable a new way to exploit two previously disclosed side channels, a class of attack that measures physical effects that leak from a device as it performs a cryptographic operation. By carefully monitoring characteristics such as power consumption, sound, electromagnetic emissions, or the amount of time it takes for an operation to occur, attackers can assemble enough information to recover secret keys that underpin the security and confidentiality of a cryptographic algorithm. [...]

On Tuesday, academic researchers unveiled new research demonstrating attacks that provide a novel way to exploit these types of side channels. The first attack uses an Internet-connected surveillance camera to take a high-speed video of the power LED on a smart card reader -- or of an attached peripheral device -- during cryptographic operations. This technique allowed the researchers to pull a 256-bit ECDSA key off the same government-approved smart card used in Minerva. The other allowed the researchers to recover the private SIKE key of a Samsung Galaxy S8 phone by training the camera of an iPhone 13 on the power LED of a USB speaker connected to the handset, in a similar way to how Hertzbleed pulled SIKE keys off Intel and AMD CPUs. Power LEDs are designed to indicate when a device is turned on. They typically cast a blue or violet light that varies in brightness and color depending on the power consumption of the device they are connected to.

There are limitations to both attacks that make them unfeasible in many (but not all) real-world scenarios (more on that later). Despite this, the published research is groundbreaking because it provides an entirely new way to facilitate side-channel attacks. Not only that, but the new method removes the biggest barrier holding back previously existing methods from exploiting side channels: the need to have instruments such as an oscilloscope, electric probes, or other objects touching or being in proximity to the device being attacked. In Minerva's case, the device hosting the smart card reader had to be compromised for researchers to collect precise-enough measurements. Hertzbleed, by contrast, didn't rely on a compromised device but instead took 18 days of constant interaction with the vulnerable device to recover the private SIKE key. To attack many other side channels, such as the one in the World War II encrypted teletype terminal, attackers must have specialized and often expensive instruments attached or near the targeted device. The video-based attacks presented on Tuesday reduce or completely eliminate such requirements. All that's required to steal the private key stored on the smart card is an Internet-connected surveillance camera that can be as far as 62 feet away from the targeted reader. The side-channel attack on the Samsung Galaxy handset can be performed by an iPhone 13 camera that's already present in the same room. Videos here and here show the video-capture process of a smart card reader and a Samsung Galaxy phone, respectively, as they perform cryptographic operations. "To the naked eye, the captured video looks unremarkable," adds Ars.

"But by analyzing the video frames for different RGB values in the green channel, an attacker can identify the start and finish of a cryptographic operation."

Microsoft will make it possible for users of its Azure Government cloud computing service, which include a variety of US agencies, to access artificial intelligence models from ChatGPT creator OpenAI. From a report: Microsoft, which is the largest investor in OpenAI and uses its technology to power its Bing chatbot, plans to announce Wednesday that Azure Government customers can now use two of OpenAI's large language models: The startup's latest and most powerful model, GPT-4, and an earlier one, GPT-3, via Microsoft's Azure OpenAI service.

The Redmond, Washington-based company plans Wednesday to release a blog post, viewed by Bloomberg, about the program, although its doesn't name specific US agencies expected to use the large language models at launch. The Defense Department, the Energy Department and NASA are among the federal government customers of Azure Government. The Defense Technical Information Center -- a part of the Defense Department that focuses on gathering and sharing military research -- will be experimenting with the OpenAI models through Microsoft's new offering, a DTIC official confirmed.

A newly declassified government report confirms for the first time that U.S. intelligence and spy agencies purchase vast amounts of commercially available information on Americans, including data from connected vehicles, web browsing data, and smartphones. From a report: By the U.S. government's own admission, the data it purchases "clearly provides intelligence value," but also "raises significant issues related to privacy and civil liberties." The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified and released the January 2022-dated report on Friday, following a request by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to disclose how the intelligence community uses commercially available data. This kind of data is generated from internet-connected devices and made available by data brokers for purchase, such as phone apps and vehicles that collect granular location data and web browsing data that tracks users as they browse the internet.

The declassified report is the U.S. government's first public disclosure revealing the risks associated with commercially available data of Americans that can be readily purchased by anyone, including adversaries and hostile nations. The United States does not have a privacy or data protection law governing the sharing or selling of Americans' private information. "In a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, [commercially available information] includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained" by other intelligence gathering capabilities, such as search warrants, wiretaps and surveillance, the report says.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: So, this is bad. Over the last few years, we've written plenty about the so-called "inter partes review" or "IPR" that came into being about a decade ago as part of the "America Invents Act," which was the first major change to the patent system in decades. For much of the first decade of the 2000s, patent trolls were running wild and creating a massive tax on innovation. There were so many stories of people (mostly lawyers) getting vague and broad patents that they never had any intention of commercializing, then waiting for someone to come along and build something actually useful and innovative... and then shaking them down with the threat of patent litigation. The IPR process, while not perfect, was at least an important tool in pushing back on some of the worst of the worst patents. In its most basic form, the IPR process allows nearly anyone to challenge a bad patent and have the special Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) review the patent to determine if it should have been granted in the first place. Given that a bad patent can completely stifle innovation for decades this seems like the very least that the Patent Office should offer to try to get rid of innovation-killing bad patents.

However, patent trolls absolutely loathe the IPR process for fairly obvious reasons. It kills their terrible patents. The entire IPR process has been challenged over and over again and (thankfully) the Supreme Court said that it's perfectly fine for the Patent Office to review granted patents to see if they made a mistake. But, of course, that never stops the patent trolls. They've complained to Congress. And, now, it seems that the Patent Office itself is trying to help them out. Recently, the USPTO announced a possible change to the IPR process that would basically lead to limiting who can actually challenge bad patents, and which patents could be challenged.

The wording of the proposed changes seems to be written in a manner to be as confusing as possible. But there are a few different elements to the proposal. One part would limit who can bring challenges to patents under the IPR system, utilizing the power of the director to do a "discretionary denial." For example, it would say that "certain for-profit entities" are not allowed to bring challenges. Why? That's not clear. [...] But the more worrisome change is this one: "Recognizing the important role the USPTO plays in encouraging and protecting innovation by individual inventors, startups, and under-resourced innovators who are working to bring their ideas to market, the Office is considering limiting the impact of AIA post-grant proceedings on such entities by denying institution when certain conditions are met." Basically, if a patent holder is designated as an "individual inventor, startup" or "under-resourced innovator" then their patents are protected from the IPR process. But, as anyone studying this space well knows, patent trolls often present themselves as all three of those things (even though it's quite frequently not at all true). [...] And, again, none of this should matter. A bad patent is a bad patent. Why should the USPTO create different rules that protect bad patents? If the patent is legit, it will survive the IPR process. The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a response to the proposed changes: "The U.S. Patent Office has proposed new rules about who can challenge wrongly granted patents. If the rules become official, they will offer new protections to patent trolls. Challenging patents will become far more onerous, and impossible for some. The new rules could stop organizations like EFF, which used this process to fight the Personal Audio 'podcasting patent,' from filing patent challenges altogether."

The digital rights group added: "If these rules were in force, it's not clear that EFF would have been able to protect the podcasting community by fighting, and ultimately winning, a patent challenge against Personal Audio LLC. Personal Audio claimed to be an inventor-owned company that was ready to charge patent royalties against podcasters large and small. EFF crowd-funded a patent challenge and took out the Personal Audio patent after a 5-year legal battle (that included a full IPR process and multiple appeals)."

Piracy release group CAKES has shut down, dealing yet another hit for the piracy ecosystem. TorrentFreak reports: For several decades, The Scene has been the main source of all pirated content made available on the Internet. Technically, release groups operate in a closed ecosystem, but the reality is different. The vast majority of the files published on private Scene servers eventually find their way to public pirate sites. The secretive nature of The Scene has been a major challenge for law enforcement but in the summer of 2020, the US Department of Justice made a major breakthrough. Following a thorough investigation, three members of the illustrious SPARKS group were indicted. The raids and the criminal investigation sent shockwaves around The Scene. Some groups stopped releasing entirely and others significantly slowed down their output, which was felt in many parts of the public piracy ecosystem too.

Amid this turmoil, a new TV release group going by the name of CAKES emerged. The group published its first release "The 100 S07E16" on October 1, 2020, and many more would follow. During the next few years, CAKES built its reputation as a steady release group, one that eventually covered 7,000 titles. That's an impressive average of more than 50 new releases per week. Aside from the massive output, CAKES was also known for including four lines from Drake's track "Pound Cake" in its release notes. These same lines are also at the start of its farewell message.

The message explains that when CAKES started out, the team made an internal promise to pull the plug when "the love" is gone. Without going into further details, that time has apparently arrived. While some people may be disappointed with this decision, CAKES has clearly made up its mind. The group prefers to highlight the achievements and experiences instead, referring to the past few years as a "crazy journey." "If you had told us how the last few years would go, we wouldn't have believed you. The skills learnt, the massive lows, the euphoric highs, it couldn't have happened with a better group of people." "I couldn't be prouder of our team, not just for what was achieved but knowing the right moment to call time. As sad as this is, goodbye from team CAKES," the group adds. GLHF, another piracy group, is mentioned in the farewell message. While no official shut down has been announced, TorrentFreak notes that "GLHF stopped releasing new titles over a week ago, which is highly atypical."

The hackers responsible for the MOVEit cyberattack downloaded confidential information from UK communications regulator Ofcom about companies it regulates, as well as its own employees -- adding to a string of victims which includes IAG SA's British Airways and the British Broadcasting Corporation. From a report: "A limited amount of information about certain companies we regulate -- some of it confidential -- along with personal data of 412 Ofcom employees, was downloaded during the attack," an Ofcom spokesman said by email. "We took immediate action to prevent further use of the MOVEit service and to implement the recommended security measures. We also swiftly alerted all affected Ofcom-regulated companies, and we continue to offer support and assistance to our colleagues."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Not so long ago, Microsoft Edge ended up in hot waters after users discovered a bug leaking your browser history to Bing. Now you may want to toggle off another feature to ensure Edge is not sending every picture you view online to Microsoft. Edge has a built-in image enhancement tool that, according to Microsoft, can use "super-resolution to improve clarity, sharpness, lighting, and contrast in images on the web." Although the feature sounds exciting, recent Microsoft Edge Canary updates have provided more information on how image enhancement works. The browser now warns that it sends image links to Microsoft instead of performing on-device enhancements.

A New York Times columnist considers alternate reasons for the upcoming House hearings with a whistleblower former intelligence official, David Grusch, who claims the US government possesses "intact and partially intact" alien vehicles: This whistle-blower's mere existence is evidence of a fascinating shift in public U.F.O. discourse. There may not be alien spacecraft, but there is clearly now a faction within the national security complex that wants Americans to think there might be alien spacecraft, to give these stories credence rather than dismissal.

The evidence for this shift includes the military's newfound willingness to disclose weird atmospheric encounters. It includes the establishment of the task force that Grusch was assigned to... It also includes other examples of credentialed figures, like the Stanford pathology professor Garry Nolan, who claim they're being handed evidence of extraterrestrial contact. And it includes the range of strange stories being fed to writers willing to operate in the weird-science zone...

I have no definite theory of why this push is happening. Maybe it's because there really is something Out There and we're being prepared for the big reveal... [M]aybe it's a cynical effort to use unexplained phenomena as an excuse to goose military funding. Or maybe it's a psy-op to discredit critics of the national security state...

The Associated Press reports: Tracking someone through apps and devices like the popular Apple AirTag without their consent could soon be deemed a criminal offense in Ohio, after the state's Republican-led Senate advanced the measure Wednesday with a unanimous bipartisan vote...

[V]iolators could be charged with a new first-degree misdemeanor offense of the "illegal use of a device or application," resulting in up to 180 days in jail. If the individual holds a prior conviction of menacing by stalking, the charge could escalate to a fourth-degree felony, resulting in six to 18 months in jail... There is no known opposition to the measure.

Exceptions to the proposal include some law enforcement activity; parents or guardians tracking their children; caregivers tracking an elderly or disabled person they are entrusted with; a non-private investigator acting on behalf of a "legitimate business purpose;" and private investigators on certain cases.
The bill now heads to Ohio's House of Representatives for further consideration.

This week venture capitalist Marc Andreessen published "his views on AI, the risks it poses and the regulation he believes it requires," reports CNBC.

But they add that "In trying to counteract all the recent talk of 'AI doomerism,' he presents what could be seen as an overly idealistic perspective of the implications..." Though he starts off reminding readers that AI "doesn't want to kill you, because it's not alive... AI is a machine — it's not going to come alive any more than your toaster will." Andreessen writes that there's a "wall of fear-mongering and doomerism" in the AI world right now. Without naming names, he's likely referring to claims from high-profile tech leaders that the technology poses an existential threat to humanity... Tech CEOs are motivated to promote such doomsday views because they "stand to make more money if regulatory barriers are erected that form a cartel of government-blessed AI vendors protected from new startup and open source competition," Andreessen wrote...

Andreessen claims AI could be "a way to make everything we care about better." He argues that AI has huge potential for productivity, scientific breakthroughs, creative arts and reducing wartime death rates. "Anything that people do with their natural intelligence today can be done much better with AI," he wrote. "And we will be able to take on new challenges that have been impossible to tackle without AI, from curing all diseases to achieving interstellar travel...." He also promotes reverting to the tech industry's "move fast and break things" approach of yesteryear, writing that both big AI companies and startups "should be allowed to build AI as fast and aggressively as they can" and that the tech "will accelerate very quickly from here — if we let it...."

Andreessen says there's work to be done. He encourages the controversial use of AI itself to protect people against AI bias and harms... In Andreessen's own idealist future, "every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful." He expresses similar visions for AI's role as a partner and collaborator for every person, scientist, teacher, CEO, government leader and even military commander.

Near the end of his post, Andreessen points out what he calls "the actual risk of not pursuing AI with maximum force and speed." That risk, he says, is China, which is developing AI quickly and with highly concerning authoritarian applications... To head off the spread of China's AI influence, Andreessen writes, "We should drive AI into our economy and society as fast and hard as we possibly can."
CNBC also points out that Andreessen himself "wants to make money on the AI revolution, and is investing in startups with that goal in mind." But Andreessen's sentiments are clear.

"Rather than allowing ungrounded panics around killer AI, 'harmful' AI, job-destroying AI, and inequality-generating AI to put us on our back feet, we in the United States and the West should lean into AI as hard as we possibly can."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times: Two senators sent a letter to TikTok's chief executive on Tuesday, accusing the company of making misleading claims to Congress around how it stores and handles American user data, and demanding answers to more than a dozen questions by the end of next week.

The letter, from Senators Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, and Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, focused on how sensitive data about American users may be stored in China and how employees there may have access to it. The lawmakers said recent reports from The New York Times and Forbes raised questions about statements made during congressional testimony in March by Shou Chew, TikTok's chief executive, and in an October 2021 hearing involving Michael Beckerman, TikTok's head of public policy for the Americas. TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.

"We are deeply troubled by TikTok's recurring pattern of providing misleading, inaccurate or false information to Congress and its users in the United States, including in response to us during oversight hearings and letters," the senators wrote...

Forbes reported last month that TikTok has stored the sensitive financial information of creators, including Social Security numbers and tax IDs, on servers in China, where employees there can have access to them... The Times reported earlier in the month that American user data, including driver's licenses and potentially illegal content such as child sexual abuse materials, was shared at TikTok and ByteDance through an internal messaging and collaboration tool called Lark. The information was often available in Lark "groups" — chat rooms of employees — with thousands of members, alarming some workers because ByteDance workers in China and elsewhere could easily see the material.

CNN summarizes the issue. "A recent advisory from U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy says there's not enough evidence to determine whether social media is safe enough for children and adolescents when it comes to their mental health." (Although a CNN news anchor points out that "Nearly all of the research points to negative impacts.")

CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent interviewed U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy "to examine what led him to sound the alarm, and who should be responsible for tackling the issue." And the surgeon general remembers when his five-year-old daughter asked to post a picture on social media. "I think finding the right balance is not easy, in part because, you know, the platforms weren't necessarily designed for balance. They were designed to maximize how much time we spend on them." CNN: How worried are you? When people hear something coming from the surgeon general's office, they think of, you know, smoking, opioids, things like this. Social media — is it at that level of concern for you?

Surgeon General: Yes, I would say yes, it is. And, and — but it's it's more complicated... because we know that some kids do actually get benefit from their experience of social media. Some are able to connect more easily with friends and family, to express themselves more creatively and more openly than they otherwise would, and to find community... But one of the things that has become an increasing source of worry for me is that the the association between social media use and harmful outcomes... [W]e're asking parents to somehow figure it out all on their own. And the reason I issued an advisory on this topic is I worry that we have not taken enough action to support parents and kids...

CNN: What is the level of evidence about the dangers of social media and what is the level of evidence that you want? I mean, what does it take for you as a surgeon general to act on this...?

Surgeon General: I think the first question I'm asking is where is the evidence of safety...? There's a lot of association data, right, that's showing an association between use and certain and negative outcomes, like for example, for kids who who use more than 3 hours of social media a day, they face double the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms. But we also know that kids are telling us in their own words and their own experience how they're experiencing social media. So, for example, about nearly half of adolescents are saying that using social media makes them feel worse about their body image...

And one of the consistent messages I hear from researchers who's been studying this area for a long time is that they are having a hard time getting access to the data from social media companies. You know, as a parent, I don't ever want to feel like someone or anyone is hiding information from me about how a product affects my child. But that's how a lot of parents are feeling right now. And so that's a place where I think transparency matters. Let's get the data out there so independent researchers can assess it and can help us understand the harms and benefits and which kids are most impacted so we can design, you know, our approach, you know, in a more informed way...

One of the things we call for in my advisory is for the policymakers to step in and establish actual, transparent, enforceable safety standards like we do for other products so that parents have some reassurance around safety... This technology is already being used by 95% of kids, Right. And I don't think that's realistic to put the genie back in the bottle here or to say somehow nobody should be using social media, that that's not the goal here... We don't like leave it up to car manufacturers to determine whether or not they've hit the standards or not. We don't do that with medications either. There should be, you know, independent authority that parents can trust are looking primarily in solely out for the welfare of their kids, and they should be the ones who enforce these standards....

You know, just to put it bluntly, I do not think we have done our job as a society to have the backs of kids and parents on this because we haven't moved fast enough to get the information to ultimately guide them on safe use... [P]arents across the country, people are trying to do the best they can with limited information.
The surgeon general also says their ideal legislation would also "help to reduce kids exposure to harmful content" and include "restrictions on features that seek to manipulate kids into spending excessive amounts of time on these platforms."

The Associated Press reports: Two apologetic lawyers responding to an angry judge in Manhattan federal court blamed ChatGPT Thursday for tricking them into including fictitious legal research in a court filing... [Attorney Steven A. Schwartz] told U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel he was "operating under a misconception ... that this website was obtaining these cases from some source I did not have access to." He said he "failed miserably" at doing follow-up research to ensure the citations were correct.

"I did not comprehend that ChatGPT could fabricate cases," Schwartz said...

The judge confronted Schwartz with one legal case invented by the computer program. It was initially described as a wrongful death case brought by a woman against an airline only to morph into a legal claim about a man who missed a flight to New York and was forced to incur additional expenses. "Can we agree that's legal gibberish?" Castel asked.

Schwartz said he erroneously thought that the confusing presentation resulted from excerpts being drawn from different parts of the case. When Castel finished his questioning, he asked Schwartz if he had anything else to say. "I would like to sincerely apologize," Schwartz said. He added that he had suffered personally and professionally as a result of the blunder and felt "embarrassed, humiliated and extremely remorseful."

He said that he and the firm where he worked — Levidow, Levidow & Oberman — had put safeguards in place to ensure nothing similar happens again.
An attorney for the law firm also told the judge that lawyers have historically had a hard time with technology, particularly new technology. "And it's not getting easier."

Because he targeted universities and airlines, the FBI had dubbed him the Unabomber, reports the Associated Press: Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the Harvard-educated mathematician who retreated to a dingy shack in the Montana wilderness and ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died Saturday. He was 81... Kaczynski died at the federal prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina, Kristie Breshears, a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons, told The Associated Press. He was found unresponsive in his cell early Saturday morning and was pronounced dead around 8 a.m., she said. A cause of death was not immediately known.

Before his transfer to the prison medical facility, he had been held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims. Years before the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax mailing, the "Unabomber's" deadly homemade bombs changed the way Americans mailed packages and boarded airplanes, even virtually shutting down air travel on the West Coast in July 1995.

He forced The Washington Post, in conjunction with The New York Times, to make the agonizing decision in September 1995 to publish his 35,000-word manifesto, "Industrial Society and Its Future," which claimed modern society and technology was leading to a sense of powerlessness and alienation. [The Post published it "at the urging of federal authorities, after the bomber said he would desist from terrorism if a national publication published his treatise."] But it led to his undoing. Kaczynski's brother David and David's wife, Linda Patrik, recognized the treatise's tone and tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the "Unabomber" for years in nation's longest, costliest manhunt.

Authorities in April 1996 found him in a 10-by-14-foot (3-by-4-meter) plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, that was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs.
A psychiatrist who interview him in prison said Kaczynski suffered from persecutorial delusions, the article points out. "I certainly don't claim to be an altruist or to be acting for the 'good' (whatever that is) of the human race," Kaczynski wrote on April 6, 1971. "I act merely from a desire for revenge."

A stand-up comic once joked that the only technology that Kaczynski didn't have a problem with....was bombs.