Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said Tuesday that the company is moving its world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee, to be closer to a major health-care epicenter. CNBC reports: In a wide-ranging conversation with Bill Frist, a former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Ellison said Oracle is moving a "huge campus" to Nashville, "which will ultimately be our world headquarters." He said Nashville is an established health center and a "fabulous place to live," one that Oracle employees are excited about. "It's the center of the industry we're most concerned about, which is the health-care industry," Ellison said. The announcement was seemingly spur-of-the-moment. "I shouldn't have said that," Ellison told Frist, a longtime health-care industry veteran who represented Tennessee in the Senate. The pair spoke during a fireside chat at the Oracle Health Summit in Nashville.

Nashville has been a major player in the health-care scene for decades, and the city is now home to a vibrant network of health systems, startups and investment firms. The city's reputation as a health-care hub was catalyzed when HCA Healthcare, one of the first for-profit hospital companies in the U.S., was founded there in 1968. HCA helped attract troves of health-care professionals to Nashville, and other organizations quickly followed suit. Oracle has been developing its new $1.2 billion campus in the city for about three years, according to The Tennessean. "Our people love it here, and we think it's the center of our future," Ellison said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a new Linux distro on the scene today, and it's a bit specialized. Its development was led by the automotive electronics supplier Elektrobit, and it's the first open source OS that complies with the automotive industry's functional safety requirements. [...] With Elektrobit's EB corbos Linux for Safety Applications (that sure is a long name), there's an open source Linux distro that finally fits the bill, having just been given the thumbs up by the German organization TUV Nord. (It also complies with the IEC 61508 standard for safety applications.) "The beauty of our concept is that you don't even need to safety-qualify Linux itself," said Moritz Neukirchner, a senior director at Elektrobit overseeing SDVs. Instead, an external safety monitor runs in a hypervisor, intercepting and validating kernel actions.

"When you look at how safety is typically being done, look at communication -- you don't safety-certify the communication specs or Ethernet stack, but you do a checker library on top, and you have a hardware anchor for checking down below, and you insure it end to end but take everything in between out of the certification path. And we have now created a concept that allows us to do exactly that for an operating system," Neukirchner told me. "So in the end, since we take Linux out of the certification path and make it usable in a safety-related context, we don't have any problems in keeping up to speed with the developer community," he explained. "Because if you start it off and say, 'Well, we're going to do Linux as a one-shot for safety,' you're going to have the next five patches and you're off [schedule] again, especially with the security regulation that's now getting toward effect now, starting in July with the UNECE R155 that requires continuous cybersecurity management vulnerability scanning for all software that ends up in the vehicle."

"In the end, we see roughly 4,000 kernel security patches within eight years for Linux. And this is the kind of challenge that you're being put up to if you want to participate in that speed of innovation of an open source community as rich as that of Linux and now want to combine this with safety-related applications," Neukirchner said. Elektrobit developed EB corbos Linux for Safety Applications together with Canonical, and together they will share the maintenance of keeping it compliant with safety requirements over time.

Google has fired another 20 workers for participating in protests against its $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, according to an activist group representing the workers. From a report: In total, the company has now fired around 50 employees over sit-in protests held in Google offices last week that were part of yearslong discontent among a group of Google and Amazon workers over claims that Israel is using the companies' services to harm Palestinians. Google has denied those claims, saying Project Nimbus, the cloud-computing contract, doesn't involve "highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services," and that Israeli government ministries that use its commercial cloud must agree to its terms of services and other policies.

No Tech For Apartheid, the group representing the workers, claimed in a statement that Google is attempting to "quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them." "That's because Google values its profit, and its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, more than people. And it certainly values it over its own workers," it said. The group said it will continue organizing until Google cancels Project Nimbus. Further reading: Google To Employees: 'We Are a Workplace'.

Toyota's Mirai, a hydrogen-powered Fuel Cell EV initially heralded as the future of driving, has faced significant challenges due to inadequate hydrogen fueling infrastructure. As chronicled by InsideEVs, many owners have become disillusioned with the vehicle's high operational costs, unreliable refueling options, and significant depreciation, prompting lawsuits and calls for buybacks. Longtime Slashdot reader whoever57 writes: Toyota Mirai owners are fed up and disillusioned. Hydrogen fuel pumps are hard to find and, rather than new pumps opening, they are closing down. Owners feel misled about the costs and availability of hydrogen fuel stations. Even if a Mirai owner can find a fuel station, it may not be operating. Moreover, refueling is frequently a long and problematic process, with pumps taking over an hour to fill a tank and cars getting stuck to the fuel pump for hours. It would be quicker to charge a battery EV. Naturally, resale values of these cars are plummeting. Even without those problems, once the complimentary hydrogen fuel supply that Toyota gives new owners expires or runs out, the cost of hydrogen fuel becomes quite expensive. "Not in my wildest dreams or nightmares would I expect a purchase from a giant car company like Toyota would turn out to be such a terrible experience," said owner Shawn Hall. "The entire H2 vehicle experience is an experiment that is failing. I didn't expect to buy a vehicle from Toyota and feel duped, cheated, and misled."

Another user wrote on Reddit: "We all need to realize that we bought a vehicle that had, at best, a questionable future. Unfortunately in this instance, the gamble didn't pay off, and the technology of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles does not appear to be something the vehicle industry is invested in pursuing. Very similar to HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, there was one clear winner and in our instance, the battery-powered EV won out over H2. Its sucks, but it is what it is."

According to French business magazine Challenges, Apple has acquired Datakalab -- a Paris-based startup specializing in artificial intelligence compression and computer vision technology. 9to5Mac reports: Datakalab described itself as "experts in low power, runtime efficient, and deep learning algorithms" that work on device. On its LinkedIn page, Datakalab highlights "industry leading compression and adaptation to deploy embedded computer vision that is fast, cost-effective and precise." Prior to the Apple acquisition had between 10 and 20 employees.

From Datakalab's now-defunct website: "Datakalab is a French technology company that develops computer image analysis algorithms to measure flows in public space. The images are instantly transformed into anonymized statistical data processed locally in 100ms. Datakalab does not store any images or personal data and only keeps statistical data. Datakalab products are built according to the principle of 'Privacy by Design.'"

While neither Apple nor DatakaLab have acknowledged the acquisition, Challenges says that the deal was reported to the European Commission this month. The report says that Datakalab's two founders did not join Apple, but multiple other employees did make the jump. Datakalab also held multiple patents related to AI compression and vision technology. The acquisition makes perfect sense given Apple's rumored ambitions to run its upcoming AI-related features in iOS 18 "entirely on device."

The European Union has opened a second formal investigation into TikTok under its Digital Services Act (DSA), an online governance and content moderation framework. The investigation centers around TikTok Lite's "Task and Reward" feature that may harm mental health, especially among minors, by promoting addictive behavior. TechCrunch reports: The Commission also said it's minded to impose interim measures that could force the company to suspend access to the TikTok Lite app in the EU while it investigates concerns the app poses mental health risks to users. Although the EU has given TikTok until April 24 to argue against the measure -- meaning the app remains accessible for now. Penalties for confirmed violations of the DSA can reach up to 6% of global annual turnover. So ByeDance, TikTok's parent, could face hefty fines if EU enforcers do end up deciding it has broken the law.

The EU's first TikTok probe covers multiple issues including the protection of minors, advertising transparency, data access for researchers, and the risk management of addictive design and harmful content. Hence it said the latest investigation will specifically focus on TikTok Lite, a version of the video sharing platform which launched earlier this month in France and Spain and includes a mechanism that allows users to earn points for doing things like watching or liking videos. Points earned through TikTok Lite can be exchanged for things like Amazon gift vouchers or TikTok's own digital currency for gifting to creators. The Commission is worried this so-called "task and reward" feature could negatively impact the mental health of young users by "stimulating addictive behavior."

The EU wrote that the second probe will focus on TikTok's compliance with the DSA obligation to conduct and submit a risk assessment report prior to the launch of the "Task and Reward Lite" program, with a particular focus on negative effects on mental health, including minors' mental health. It also said it will look into measures taken by TikTok to mitigate those risks. In a press release announcing the action, the EU said ByeDance failed to produce a risk assessment about the feature which it had asked to see last week -- when it gave the company 24 hours to produce the document. Since it failed to submit the risk assessment paperwork on April 18 the Commission wrote that it suspects a "prima facie infringement of the DSA."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Home Assistant, until recently, has been a wide-ranging and hard-to-define project. The open smart home platform is an open source OS you can run anywhere that aims to connect all your devices together. But it's also bespoke Raspberry Pi hardware, in Yellow and Green. It's entirely free, but it also receives funding through a private cloud services company, Nabu Casa. It contains tiny board project ESPHome and other inter-connected bits. It has wide-ranging voice assistant ambitions, but it doesn't want to be Alexa or Google Assistant. Home Assistant is a lot.

After an announcement this weekend, however, Home Assistant's shape is a bit easier to draw out. All of the project's ambitions now fall under the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit organization that now contains Home Assistant and more than 240 related bits. Its mission statement is refreshing, and refreshingly honest about the state of modern open source projects. "We've done this to create a bulwark against surveillance capitalism, the risk of buyout, and open-source projects becoming abandonware," the Open Home Foundation states in a press release. "To an extent, this protection extends even against our future selves -- so that smart home users can continue to benefit for years, if not decades. No matter what comes." Along with keeping Home Assistant funded and secure from buy-outs or mission creep, the foundation intends to help fund and collaborate with external projects crucial to Home Assistant, like Z-Wave JS and Zigbee2MQTT.

Home Assistant's ambitions don't stop with money and board seats, though. They aim to "be an active political advocate" in the smart home field, toward three primary principles:

- Data privacy, which means devices with local-only options, and cloud services with explicit permissions
- Choice in using devices with one another through open standards and local APIs
- Sustainability by repurposing old devices and appliances beyond company-defined lifetimes

Notably, individuals cannot contribute modest-size donations to the Open Home Foundation. Instead, the foundation asks supporters to purchase a Nabu Casa subscription or contribute code or other help to its open source projects. Further reading: The Verge's interview with Home Assistant founder Paulus Schoutsen

Amazon confirmed it is ending Prime Air drone delivery operations in Lockeford, California. The Central California town of 3,500 was the company's second U.S. drone delivery site, after College Station, Texas. Operations were announced in June 2022. From a report: The retail giant is not offering details around the setback, only noting, "We'll offer all current employees opportunities at other sites, and will continue to serve customers in Lockeford with other delivery methods. We want to thank the community for all their support and feedback over the past few years."

College Station deliveries will continue, along with a forthcoming site in Tolleson, Arizona set to kick off deliveries later this year. Tolleson, a city of just over 7,000, is located in Maricopa County, in the western portion of the Phoenix metropolitan area. Prime Air's arrival brings same-day deliveries to Amazon customers in the region, courtesy of a hybrid fulfillment center/delivery station. The company says it will be contacting impacted customers when the service is up and running. There's no specific information on timing beyond "this year," owing, in part, to ongoing negotiations with both local officials and the FAA required to deploy in the airspace.

In a huge move for the mixed reality industry, Meta announced today that it's opening the Quest's operating system to third-party companies, allowing them to build headsets of their own. From a report: Think of it like moving the Quest's ecosystem from an Apple model, where one company builds both the hardware and software, to more of a hardware free-for-all like Android. The Quest OS is being rebranded to "Meta Horizon OS," and at this point it seems to have found two early adopters. ASUS's Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand is working on a new "performance gaming" headsets, while Lenovo is working on devices for "productivity, learning and entertainment." (Don't forget, Lenovo also built the poorly-received Oculus Rift S.)

As part of the news, Meta says it's also working on a limited-edition Xbox "inspired" Quest headset. (Microsoft and Meta also worked together recently to bring Xbox cloud gaming to the Quest.) Meta is also calling on Google to bring over the Google Play 2D app store to Meta Horizon OS. And, in an effort to bring more content to the Horizon ecosystem, software developed through the Quest App Lab will be featured in the Horizon Store. The company is also developing a new spatial framework to let mobile developers created mixed reality apps.

A Shanghai flying taxi company says that China's "low altitude" industry is edging ahead of western rivals, thanks to more supportive regulators, technological breakthroughs and cut-throat competition in the Chinese logistics sector. From a report: The total market created by electric vertical take-off and landing, or eVTOL, aircraft is forecast to be worth $1.5tn a year by 2040 in a base-case assessment by Morgan Stanley analysts, with potential customers across airlines, logistics, emergency services, agriculture, tourism and security operations. China's AutoFlight Group won airworthiness certification from the Civil Aviation Administration of China in late March for the design and parts for its unmanned CarryAll aircraft -- a global first for an eVTOL weighing more than 1 tonne being cleared by regulators.

Kellen Xie, AutoFlight vice-president, said that while the company is also seeking similar approvals in Europe, the CAAC has been "quite supportive" of the new industry. "They work longer hours... they are determined to actually speed up the process of bringing this new technology into reality," he said. EVTOL aircraft take off vertically, like helicopters, but then transition into fixed-wing mode for travelling at higher speeds, offering faster and more efficient transport than ground-based options. Analysts point to a labyrinth of regulatory and safety hurdles, but supporters say the technology could fundamentally reshape how humans travel and freight is moved, in a level of disruption akin to the introduction of mass-market cars and commercial airlines. Most eVTOL aircraft are still in the testing stages and vary widely in terms of how fast and high they can fly and how much weight they can carry.

50 years ago this week, PC software pioneer Gary Kildall "demonstrated CP/M, the first commercially successful personal computer operating system in Pacific Grove, California," according to a blog post from Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum. It tells the story of "how his company, Digital Research Inc., established CP/M as an industry standard and its subsequent loss to a version from Microsoft that copied the look and feel of the DRI software."

Kildall was a CS instructor and later associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California... He became fascinated with Intel Corporation's first microprocessor chip and simulated its operation on the school's IBM mainframe computer. This work earned him a consulting relationship with the company to develop PL/M, a high-level programming language that played a significant role in establishing Intel as the dominant supplier of chips for personal computers.

To design software tools for Intel's second-generation processor, he needed to connect to a new 8" floppy disk-drive storage unit from Memorex. He wrote code for the necessary interface software that he called CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) in a few weeks, but his efforts to build the electronic hardware required to transfer the data failed. The project languished for a year. Frustrated, he called electronic engineer John Torode, a college friend then teaching at UC Berkeley, who crafted a "beautiful rat's nest of wirewraps, boards and cables" for the task.

Late one afternoon in the fall of 1974, together with John Torode, in the backyard workshop of his home at 781 Bayview Avenue, Pacific Grove, Gary "loaded my CP/M program from paper tape to the diskette and 'booted' CP/M from the diskette, and up came the prompt: *

[...] By successfully booting a computer from a floppy disk drive, they had given birth to an operating system that, together with the microprocessor and the disk drive, would provide one of the key building blocks of the personal computer revolution... As Intel expressed no interest in CP/M, Gary was free to exploit the program on his own and sold the first license in 1975.
What happened next? Here's some highlights from the blog post:

• "Reluctant to adapt the code for another controller, Gary worked with Glen Ewing to split out the hardware dependent-portions so they could be incorporated into a separate piece of code called the BIOS (Basic Input Output System)... The BIOS code allowed all Intel and compatible microprocessor-based computers from other manufacturers to run CP/M on any new hardware. This capability stimulated the rise of an independent software industry..."

• "CP/M became accepted as a standard and was offered by most early personal computer vendors, including pioneers Altair, Amstrad, Kaypro, and Osborne..."

• "[Gary's company] introduced operating systems with windowing capability and menu-driven user interfaces years before Apple and Microsoft... However, by the mid-1980s, in the struggle with the juggernaut created by the combined efforts of IBM and Microsoft, DRI had lost the basis of its operating systems business."

• "Gary sold the company to Novell Inc. of Provo, Utah, in 1991. Ultimately, Novell closed the California operation and, in 1996, disposed of the assets to Caldera, Inc., which used DRI intellectual property assets to prevail in a lawsuit against Microsoft."

The Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S.-China rivalry "has a new flashpoint in the battle for technology supremacy: electric cars."

"So far, the U.S. is losing." Last year, China became the world's foremost auto exporter, according to the China Passenger Car Assn., surpassing Japan with more than 5 million sales overseas. New energy vehicles accounted for about 25% of those exports, and more than half of those were created by Chinese brands, a shift from the traditional assembly role China has played for foreign automakers. "The big growth has happened in the last three years," said Stephen Dyer, head of the Asia automotive and industrials unit at AlixPartners, a consulting firm. "With Chinese automakers making inroads for most of the market share, that's a huge challenge for foreign automakers." China's rapid expansion domestically and abroad has added fuel to a series of clashes between the U.S. and China over trade and advanced technology, as competition intensifies between the two superpowers...

One area in which Chinese automakers handily beat Western competitors is on price, thanks to government subsidies that supported the industry's initial rise as well as cheap access to critical minerals and components such as lithium-ion batteries, which account for about a third of the overall cost of production... In March, BYD cut the price of its cheapest EV model in China to less than $10,000. According to Kelley Blue Book, the average EV retail price is $55,343 in the U.S., compared with $48,247 across all vehicles... Though 27.5% tariffs have in effect locked Chinese EVs out of the U.S. market, the fear that the cheaper models could eventually undermine American automakers has started to spread. The Alliance of American Manufacturing warned in a February report that allowing Chinese EVs into the country would be an "extinction-level event" for the U.S. auto industry. The group also cited the risks of Chinese auto companies building facilities across the border in Mexico that could circumvent tariffs....

"When the global market is flooded by artificially cheap Chinese products, the viability of American and other foreign firms is put into question," [said America's Treasury Secretary in April]. The European Union has opened an investigation into government subsidies utilized by China's EV industry and whether such support violates international trade laws.

This week saw the release of the LXQt 2.0 desktop environment, reports 9to5Linux. And besides bringing Qt 6 support (and a new default application menu), it also brings support for the Wayland display protocol to more components: The LXQt development is confident that the next major release, LXQt 2.1, will be fully Wayland compatible. The components that need to be ported to Wayland include ScreenGrab, LXQt Global Shortcuts, LXQt Panel's task-bar and keyboard indicator, some input settings, and settings of monitor, power button, and screen locker.

"Wayland will be the main target for LXQt 2.1.0, as Qt6 was for LXQt 2.0.0" said the devs. "Most Wayland compositors have tools that can be used instead of them, such that an LXQt-Wayland session is already possible for advanced users."
The lightweight Linux distro Lubuntu uses LXQtplace in place of GNOME — and Lubuntu 24.04 LTS will include an optional Wayland session alongside its default Xorg one, according to 9to5Linux:

I said it before and I'll say it again, 2024 is the year of the Wayland desktop... The Lubuntu team plans to support the Xorg session until 2026 to aid users with older GPUs... However, the tables will be turned next year with the Lubuntu 24.10 release, which will be shipping with Wayland by default.

The EU's European Data Protection Board oversees its privacy-protecting GDPR policies.

Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that nearly two dozen civil society groups and nonprofits wrote the Board an open letter "urging it not to endorse a strategy used by Meta that they say is intended to bypass the EU's privacy protections for commercial gain."

Meta's strategy is sometimes called "Pay or Okay," writes long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo : Meta offers users a choice: "consent" to tracking, or pay over €250/year to use its sites without invasive monetization of personal data.
Meta prefers the phrase "subsccription for no ads," and told TechCrunch it makes them compliant with EU laws: A raft of complaints have been filed against Meta's implementation of the pay-or-consent tactic since it launched the "no ads" subscription offer last fall. Additionally, in a notable step last month, the European Union opened a formal investigation into Meta's tactic, seeking to find whether it breaches obligations that apply to Facebook and Instagram under the competition-focused Digital Markets Act. That probe remains ongoing.
The letter to the Board called for "robust protections that prioritize data subjects' agency and control over their information." And Wednesday the board issued its first decision:

"[I]n most cases, it will not be possible for [social media services] to comply with the requirements for valid consent, if they confront users only with a choice between consenting to processing of personal data for behavioural advertising purposes and paying a fee." The EDPB considers that offering only a paid alternative to services which involve the processing of personal data for behavioural advertising purposes should not be the default way forward for controllers. When developing alternatives, large online platforms should consider providing individuals with an 'equivalent alternative' that does not entail the payment of a fee. If controllers do opt to charge a fee for access to the 'equivalent alternative', they should give significant consideration to offering an additional alternative. This free alternative should be without behavioural advertising, e.g. with a form of advertising involving the processing of less or no personal data.
EDPB Chair, Anu Talus added: "Controllers should take care at all times to avoid transforming the fundamental right to data protection into a feature that individuals have to pay to enjoy."

San Francisco-based drone-delivery service Zipline "said Friday that it hit its 1 millionth delivery to customers," reports CNBC, "and that it's eyeing restaurant partnerships in its next phase of growth."

Zipline's clients already include more than 4,700 hospitals, according to the article, as well as major brands like Walmart. A Panera executive even told CNBC they hope to test Zipline deliveries in Seattle next year, expecting they won't cost the company any more than third-party delivery services: The company said its zero-emission drones have now flown more than 70 million autonomous commercial miles across four continents and delivered more than 10 million products. The milestone 1 millionth delivery carried two bags of IV fluid from a Zipline distribution center in Ghana to a local health facility... Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton told CNBC that 70% of the company's deliveries have happened in the past two years and, in the future, the goal is to do 1 million deliveries a day...

"We need to start using vehicles that are light, fast, autonomous and zero-emission," Cliffton said. "Delivering in this way is 10 times as fast, it's less expensive ... and relative to the traditional delivery apps that most restaurants will be working with, we triple the service radius, which means you actually [get] 10 times the number of customers who are reachable via instant delivery."

"Workers installing a light pole in Missouri cut into a fiber line," reports the Associated Press, knocking out 911 phone service "for emergency agencies in Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota, an official with the company that operates the line said Thursday." In Kansas City, Missouri, workers installing a light pole for another company Wednesday cut into a Lumen Technologies fiber line, Lumen global issues director Mark Molzen said in an email to The Associated Press. Service was restored within 2 1/2 hours, he said. There were no reports of 911 outages in Kansas City...

The Dundy County Sheriff's Office in Nebraska warned in a social media post Wednesday night that 911 callers would receive a busy signal and urged people to instead call the administrative phone line. About three hours later, officials said mobile and landline 911 services had been restored. In Douglas County, home to Omaha and more than a quarter of Nebraska's residents, officials first learned there was a problem when calls from certain cellphone companies showed up in a system that maps calls but didn't go through over the phone. Operators started calling back anyone whose call didn't go through, and officials reached out to Lumen, which confirmed the outage. Service was restored by 4 a.m.

Kyle Kramer, the technical manager for Douglas County's 911 Center, said the outage highlights the potential problems of having so many calls go over the same network. "As things become more interconnected in our modern world, whether you're on a wireless device or a landline now, those are no longer going over the traditional old copper phone wires that may have different paths in different areas," Kramer said. "Large networks usually have some aggregation point, and those aggregation points can be a high risk."

Kramer said this incident and the two previous 911 outages he has seen in the past year in Omaha make him concerned that communications companies aren't building enough redundancy into their networks.
South Dakota officials called the state-wide outage "unprecedented," with their Department of Public Safety reporting the outage lasted two hours (though texting to 911 still worked in most locations — and of course, people could still call local emergency services using their non-emergency lines.) America's FCC has already begun an investigation.



The article notes that "The outages, ironically, occurred in the midst of National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader davidwr for sharing the article.

The U.S. House of Representatives just passed its long-delayed Ukraine aid bill. But along with it they also approved a bill banning TikTok "if its Chinese owner does not sell the video app," according to NPR: While lawmakers in the House advanced a similar bill last month, this effort is different for two reasons: It is attached to a sweeping foreign aid bill providing support for Ukraine and Israel. And it addresses concerns from some members of the Senate by extending the deadline for TikTok to find a buyer. President Biden supports the effort. That means TikTok being forced to sell, or face a possible ban, is on the fast-track to becoming law. It would mark the first time ever the U.S. government has passed a law that could shut down an entire social media platform, setting the stage for what is expected to be a protracted legal battle... TikTok says it has built a firewall between its headquarters in Los Angeles and its parent company in Beijing, but some reports indicate U.S. user data does still move between the two.

While there has been no evidence made public that Chinese government officials have accessed Americans' information through TikTok, the idea that China has the theoretical ability to weaponize an app used by half of America has been enough to set off an all-out crackdown. In Saturday's vote, 360 Representatives voted in favor of the sell-or-be-banned TikTok bill, while just 58 voted against it.

New submitter Baloo Uriza writes: In a rare display of sanity in the automotive space, British Columbia has banned autonomous cars from its highways after years of watching autonomous cars hamper emergency response efforts in California and outright kill a pedestrian in Arizona. Let's hope this regulatory trend continues and moves into the human space by pulling licenses of drivers with a known history of poor driving. In the shared article, The Drive notes that the ban only applies to self-driving vehicles that exceed a Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) autonomy rating of Level 2. [A full breakdown of each of the levels can be found here.] The ban is part of an update to B.C.'s Motor Vehicle Act that went into effect on April 5, 2024 and includes possible consequences of a max penalty of $2,000 (CAD) in fines and up to six months of prison time. Importantly, the ban could change as autonomous driving tech evolves in the coming years.

Since the ban doesn't affect Level 2 vehicles, Tesla owners who use Autopilot and FSD, as well as Ford and GM vehicle owners with BlueCruise and Super Cruise, will be exempt. In fact, there are currently no Level 3 autonomous vehicles for sale in Canada.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: While Fedora 41 in late 2024 is aiming to have more reproducible package builds, openSUSE Factory has already achieved a significant milestone in bit-by-bit reproducible builds. Since last month openSUSE Factory has been producing bit-by-bit reproducible builds sans the likes of embedded signatures. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed packages for that rolling-release distribution are being verified for bit-by-bit reproducible builds. SUSE/openSUSE is still verifying all packages are yielding reproducible builds but so far it's looking like 95% or more of packages are working out. You can learn more via the openSUSE blog.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: U.S. government officials were scrambling Friday night to prevent what they fear could be a significant loss of access to critical national security information, after two major U.S. communications providers said they would stop complying with orders under a controversial surveillance law that is set to expire at midnight, according to five people familiar with the matter.

One communications provider informed the National Security Agency that it would stop complying on Monday with orders under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables U.S. intelligence agencies to gather without a warrant the digital communications of foreigners overseas — including when they text or email people inside the United States. Another provider suggested that it would cease complying at midnight Friday unless the law is reauthorized, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.

The companies' decisions, which were conveyed privately and have not previously been reported, have alarmed national security officials, who strongly disagree with their position and argue that the law requires the providers to continue complying with the government's surveillance orders even after the statute expires. That's because a federal court this month granted the government a one-year extension to continue intelligence collection.
UPDATE (4/20/2024): US Passes Bill Reauthorizing 'FISA' Surveillance for Two More Years.