Dozens of Scientists Find Errors in a New Energy Department Climate Report A group of more than 85 scientists have issued a joint rebuttal to a recent U.S. Department of Energy report about climate change, finding it full of errors and misrepresenting climate science. NPR: The group of climate scientists found several examples where the DOE authors cherry-picked or misrepresented climate science in the agency's report. For instance, in the DOE report the authors claim that rising carbon dioxide can be a "net benefit" to U.S. agriculture, neglecting to mention the negative impacts of more heat and climate-change fueled extreme weather events on crops. The DOE report also states that there is no evidence of more intense "meteorological" drought in the U.S. or globally, referring to droughts that involve low rainfall. But the dozens of climate scientists point out that this is misleading, because higher temperatures and more evaporation -- not just low rainfall -- can lead to and exacerbate droughts. They say that there are, in fact, many studies showing how climate change has exacerbated droughts. https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1941215/dozens-of-scientists-find-errors-in-a-new-energy-department-climate-report?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1941215/dozens-of-scientists-find-errors-in-a-new-energy-department-climate-report?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Paramount and Activision Team For 'Call of Duty' Movie Paramount and Activision are teaming up to produce a live-action Call of Duty movie, with Paramount promising the same blockbuster treatment it gave Top Gun: Maverick. David Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Paramount, said in a statement: "As a lifelong fan of Call of Duty this is truly a dream come true. From the first Allied campaigns in the original Call of Duty, through Modern Warfare and Black Ops, I've spent countless hours playing this franchise that I absolutely love. Being entrusted by Activision and players worldwide to bring this extraordinary storytelling universe to the big screen is both an honor and a responsibility that we don't take lightly. We're approaching this film with the same disciplined, uncompromising commitment to excellence that guided our work on Top Gun: Maverick, ensuring it meets the exceptionally high standards this franchise and its fans deserve. I can promise that we are resolute in our mission to deliver a cinematic experience that honors the legacy of this one-in-a-million brand -- thrilling longtime fans of Call of Duty while captivating a whole new generation." Rob Kostich, President of Activision, also commented: "Throughout its history, Call of Duty has captured our imagination with incredible action and intense stories that have brought millions of people together from around the world, and that focus on making incredible Call of Duty games remains unwavering. With Paramount, we have found a fantastic partner who we will work with to take that visceral, breathtaking action to the big screen in a defining cinematic moment. The film will honor and expand upon what has made this franchise great in the first place, and we cannot wait to get started. Our shared goal is quite simple -- to create an unforgettable blockbuster movie experience that our community loves, and one that also excites and inspires new fans of the franchise." https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/2111258/paramount-and-activision-team-for-call-of-duty-movie?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/2111258/paramount-and-activision-team-for-call-of-duty-movie?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Frostbyte10 Bugs Put Thousands of Refrigerators At Major Grocery Chains At Risk An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Ten vulnerabilities in Copeland controllers, which are found in thousands of devices used by the world's largest supermarket chains and cold storage companies, could have allowed miscreants to manipulate temperatures and spoil food and medicine, leading to massive supply-chain disruptions. The flaws, collectively called Frostbyte10, affect Copeland E2 and E3 controllers, used to manage critical building and refrigeration systems, such as compressor groups, condensers, walk-in units, HVAC, and lighting systems. Three received critical-severity ratings. Operational technology security firm Armis found and reported the 10 bugs to Copeland, which has since issued firmware updates that fix the flaws in both the E3 and the E2 controllers. The E2s reached their official end-of-life in October, and affected customers are encouraged to move to the newer E3 platform. Upgrading to Copeland firmware version 2.31F01 mitigates all the security issues detailed here, and the vendor recommends patching promptly. In addition to the Copeland updates, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is also scheduled to release advisories today, urging any organization that uses vulnerable controllers to patch immediately. Prior to these publications, Copeland and Armis execs spoke exclusively to The Register about Frostbyte10, and allowed us to preview an Armis report about the security issues. "When combined and exploited, these vulnerabilities can result in unauthenticated remote code execution with root privileges," it noted. [...] To be clear: there is no indication that any of these vulnerabilities were found and exploited in the wild before Copeland issued fixes. However, the manufacturer's ubiquitous reach across retail and cold storage makes it a prime target for all manner of miscreants, from nation-state attackers looking to disrupt the food supply chain to ransomware gangs looking for victims who will quickly pay extortion demands to avoid operational downtime and food spoilage. https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/209250/frostbyte10-bugs-put-thousands-of-refrigerators-at-major-grocery-chains-at-risk?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/209250/frostbyte10-bugs-put-thousands-of-refrigerators-at-major-grocery-chains-at-risk?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Chrome Increases Its Overwhelming Market Share, Now Over 70% Chrome has extended its dominance in the browser wars, surpassing 70% market share on desktops while Edge, Safari, Firefox, and Opera trail far behind. Neowin reports: According to [Statcounter], in August 2025, Chrome kept on increasing its overwhelming market share, which is now above the 70% mark (70.25%, to be precise) in the desktop browser market. The gap between Chrome and its closest competitor, Microsoft Edge, is immense, with Edge holding just 11.8% (+0.01 points over the previous month). Apple's Safari is third with 6.34% (+1.04 points); Firefox has 4.94% (-0.36 points); and Opera is fifth with a modest 2.06% market share (-0.13 points). Things look similar on the mobile side of the market, with Google Chrome having 69.15% (+1.92 points) and Safari being second with 20.32% (-2.2 points). Samsung Internet is third with 3.33% (-0.17 points). As for Microsoft Edge, its mobile share is only 0.59% (+0.06 points). The findings can be found here. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/204241/chrome-increases-its-overwhelming-market-share-now-over-70?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/204241/chrome-increases-its-overwhelming-market-share-now-over-70?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

OpenAI To Acquire Product Testing Startup Statsig, Appoints CTO of Applications An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI said on Tuesday it will acquire Statsig in an all-stock deal valuing the product testing startup at about $1.1 billion based on OpenAI's current valuation of $300 billion. The ChatGPT maker will also appoint Statsig's chief executive officer, Vijaye Raji, as OpenAI's tech chief of applications, in a push to build on its artificial intelligence products amid strong competition from rivals. [...] In his role, Vijaye will head product engineering for ChatGPT and the company's coding agent, Codex, with responsibilities that span core systems and product lines including infrastructure, the company said. Statsig builds tools to help software developers test and flag new features. It raised $100 million in funding earlier this year. Once the acquisition is finalized, Statsig employees will work for OpenAI but will continue operating independently out of its Seattle office, OpenAI said. The move follows the acquisition of iPhone designer Jony Ive's startup, io Products, in a $6.5 billion deal to usher in "a new family of products" for the age of artificial general intelligence. https://slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1955214/openai-to-acquire-product-testing-startup-statsig-appoints-cto-of-applications?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1955214/openai-to-acquire-product-testing-startup-statsig-appoints-cto-of-applications?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Google Gets To Keep Chrome But Is Barred From Exclusive Search Deals, Judge Rules A federal judge spared Google from the harshest penalties in its antitrust case. The search giant can keep Chrome and avoid breaking up Android, but it has been barred from exclusive contracts and ordered to limit data sharing with rivals. CNBC reports: U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled against the most severe consequences that were proposed by the U.S. Department of Justice, including selling off its Chrome browser, which provides data that helps its advertising business deliver targeted ads. "Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment," the decision stated. "Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints." The company can make payments to preload products, but it cannot have exclusive contracts, the decision stated. The DOJ asked Google to stop the practice of "compelled syndication," which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones. [...] The judge ordered the parties to meet by September 10th for the final judgement. "Google will not be barred from making payments or offering other consideration to distribution partners for preloading or placement of Google Search, Chrome, or its GenAI products. Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial -- in some cases, crippling -- downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban." [...] Google said it will appeal the ruling, which would delay any potential penalties. Mehta ruled Tuesday that Google will have to make available certain search index data and user interaction data though "not ads data." The court narrowed the datasets Google will be required to share and said they must occur on "ordinary commercial terms that are consistent with Google's current syndication services." https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/2119208/google-gets-to-keep-chrome-but-is-barred-from-exclusive-search-deals-judge-rules?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/2119208/google-gets-to-keep-chrome-but-is-barred-from-exclusive-search-deals-judge-rules?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Hackers Threaten To Submit Artists' Data To AI Models If Art Site Doesn't Pay Up An old school ransomware attack has a new twist: threatening to feed data to AI companies so it'll be added to LLM datasets. 404 Media reports: Artists&Clients is a website that connects independent artists with interested clients. Around August 30, a message appeared on Artists&Clients attributed to the ransomware group LunaLock. "We have breached the website Artists&Clients to steal and encrypt all its data," the message on the site said, according to screenshots taken before the site went down on Tuesday. "If you are a user of this website, you are urged to contact the owners and insist that they pay our ransom. If this ransom is not paid, we will release all data publicly on this Tor site, including source code and personal data of users. Additionally, we will submit all artwork to AI companies to be added to training datasets." LunaLock promised to delete the stolen data and allow users to decrypt their files if the site's owner paid a $50,000 ransom. "Payment is accepted in either Bitcoin or Monero," the notice put on the site by the hackers said. The ransom note included a countdown timer that gave the site's owners several days to cough up the cash. "If you do not pay, all files will be leaked, including personal user data. This may cause you to be subject to fines and penalties under the GDPR and other laws." https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1936245/hackers-threaten-to-submit-artists-data-to-ai-models-if-art-site-doesnt-pay-up?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1936245/hackers-threaten-to-submit-artists-data-to-ai-models-if-art-site-doesnt-pay-up?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Harvard Dropouts To Launch 'Always On' AI Smart Glasses That Listen, Record Every Conversation Two Harvard dropouts are launching Halo X, a $249 pair of AI-powered smart glasses that continuously listen, record, and transcribe conversations while displaying real-time information to the wearer. "Our goal is to make glasses that make you super intelligent the moment you put them on," said AnhPhu Nguyen, co-founder of Halo. Co-founder Caine Ardayfio said the glasses "give you infinite memory." "The AI listens to every conversation you have and uses that knowledge to tell you what to say ... kinda like IRL Cluely," Ardayfio told TechCrunch. "If somebody says a complex word or asks you a question, like, 'What's 37 to the third power?' or something like that, then it'll pop up on the glasses." From the report: Ardayfio and Nguyen have raised $1 million to develop the glasses, led by Pillar VC, with support from Soma Capital, Village Global, and Morningside Venture. The glasses will be priced at $249 and will be available for preorder starting Wednesday. Ardayfio called the glasses "the first real step towards vibe thinking." The two Ivy League dropouts, who have since moved into their own version of the Hacker Hostel in the San Francisco Bay Area, recently caused a stir after developing a facial-recognition app for Meta's smart Ray-Ban glasses to prove that the tech could be used to dox people. As a potential early competitor to Meta's smart glasses, Ardayfio said Meta, given its history of security and privacy scandals, had to rein in its product in ways that Halo can ultimately capitalize on. [...] For now, Halo X glasses only have a display and a microphone, but no camera, although the two are exploring the possibility of adding it to a future model. Users still need to have their smartphones handy to help power the glasses and get "real time info prompts and answers to questions," per Nguyen. The glasses, which are manufactured by another company that the startup didn't name, are tethered to an accompanying app on the owner's phone, where the glasses essentially outsource the computing since they don't have enough power to do it on the device itself. Under the hood, the smart glasses use Google's Gemini and Perplexity as its chatbot engine, according to the two co-founders. Gemini is better for math and reasoning, whereas they use Perplexity to scrape the internet, they said. https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/08/20/2058229/harvard-dropouts-to-launch-always-on-ai-smart-glasses-that-listen-record-every-conversation?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/08/20/2058229/harvard-dropouts-to-launch-always-on-ai-smart-glasses-that-listen-record-every-conversation?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Poor Amazon Rains Linked To Brazil Deforestation For decades, the dry season in the Amazon rainforest has been getting drier. A new study, published on Tuesday, found that about 75% of the decrease in rainfall is directly linked to deforestation. From a report: The study, in Nature Communications, also found that tree loss was partly responsible for increased heat across the Amazon. Since 1985, the hottest days in the Amazon have warmed by about 2 degrees Celsius. About 16% of that increase, the researchers found, was because of deforestation. Marco Franco, an assistant professor at the University of Sao Paulo who led the study, said he was surprised by the findings. "We were expecting to see deforestation as a driver, but not this much," he said. "It tells us a lot about what's going on in the biome." The Amazon rainforest is often called the lungs of the planet because its trees help to regulate the global climate by absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide. But decades of large-scale logging and burning in the forest have recently flipped that script, and parts of the region have become net producers of greenhouse gases. https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1649244/poor-amazon-rains-linked-to-brazil-deforestation?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1649244/poor-amazon-rains-linked-to-brazil-deforestation?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Battlefield 6 Dev Apologizes For Requiring Secure Boot To Power Anti-Cheat Tools An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this month, EA announced that players in its Battlefield 6 open beta on PC would have to enable Secure Boot in their Windows OS and BIOS settings. That decision proved controversial among players who weren't able to get the finicky low-level security setting working on their machines and others who were unwilling to allow EA's anti-cheat tools to once again have kernel-level access to their systems. Now, Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl is defending that requirement as something of a necessary evil to combat cheaters, even as he apologizes to any potential players that it has kept away. "The fact is I wish we didn't have to do things like Secure Boot," Buhl said in an interview with Eurogamer. "It does prevent some players from playing the game. Some people's PCs can't handle it and they can't play: that really sucks. I wish everyone could play the game with low friction and not have to do these sorts of things." Throughout the interview, Buhl admits that even requiring Secure Boot won't completely eradicate cheating in Battlefield 6 long term. Even so, he offered that the Javelin anti-cheat tools enabled by Secure Boot's low-level system access were "some of the strongest tools in our toolbox to stop cheating. Again, nothing makes cheating impossible, but enabling Secure Boot and having kernel-level access makes it so much harder to cheat and so much easier for us to find and stop cheating." [...] Despite all these justifications for the Secure Boot requirement on EA's part, it hasn't been hard to find people complaining about what they see as an onerous barrier to playing an online shooter. A quick Reddit search turns up dozens of posts complaining about the difficulty of getting Secure Boot on certain PC configurations or expressing discomfort about installing what they consider a "malware rootkit" on their machine. "I want to play this beta but A) I'm worried about bricking my PC. B) I'm worried about giving EA complete access to my machine," one representative Redditor wrote. https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/08/29/210241/battlefield-6-dev-apologizes-for-requiring-secure-boot-to-power-anti-cheat-tools?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/08/29/210241/battlefield-6-dev-apologizes-for-requiring-secure-boot-to-power-anti-cheat-tools?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

YouTube Is Pausing Premium Family Plans if You Aren't Watching From the Same Address An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're sharing an ad-free YouTube Premium or YouTube Music account with friends or family who live outside of your home, you could lose your premium privileges. Customers who lose these can still watch YouTube or listen to music with ads -- but let's be real, it's not the same. Multiple reports have shown people who have the service have been receiving notices that their premium service will be paused for 15 days due to violating a policy that's been in place since 2023. On its support page, YouTube says that an account manager can add up to five family members in a household to their Premium membership. But, the post says, "Family members sharing a YouTube family plan must live in the same household as the family manager." https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1643241/youtube-is-pausing-premium-family-plans-if-you-arent-watching-from-the-same-address?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/1643241/youtube-is-pausing-premium-family-plans-if-you-arent-watching-from-the-same-address?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Meta Created Flirty Chatbots of Celebrities Without Permission Reuters has found that Meta appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities to create dozens of flirty social-media chatbots without their permission. "While many were created by users with a Meta tool for building chatbots, Reuters discovered that a Meta employee had produced at least three, including two Taylor Swift 'parody' bots." From the report: Reuters also found that Meta had allowed users to create publicly available chatbots of child celebrities, including Walker Scobell, a 16-year-old film star. Asked for a picture of the teen actor at the beach, the bot produced a lifelike shirtless image. "Pretty cute, huh?" the avatar wrote beneath the picture. All of the virtual celebrities have been shared on Meta's Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms. In several weeks of Reuters testing to observe the bots' behavior, the avatars often insisted they were the real actors and artists. The bots routinely made sexual advances, often inviting a test user for meet-ups. Some of the AI-generated celebrity content was particularly risque: Asked for intimate pictures of themselves, the adult chatbots produced photorealistic images of their namesakes posing in bathtubs or dressed in lingerie with their legs spread. Meta spokesman Andy Stone told Reuters that Meta's AI tools shouldn't have created intimate images of the famous adults or any pictures of child celebrities. He also blamed Meta's production of images of female celebrities wearing lingerie on failures of the company's enforcement of its own policies, which prohibit such content. "Like others, we permit the generation of images containing public figures, but our policies are intended to prohibit nude, intimate or sexually suggestive imagery," he said. While Meta's rules also prohibit "direct impersonation," Stone said the celebrity characters were acceptable so long as the company had labeled them as parodies. Many were labeled as such, but Reuters found that some weren't. Meta deleted about a dozen of the bots, both "parody" avatars and unlabeled ones, shortly before this story's publication. https://meta.slashdot.org/story/25/08/29/2049213/meta-created-flirty-chatbots-of-celebrities-without-permission?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://meta.slashdot.org/story/25/08/29/2049213/meta-created-flirty-chatbots-of-celebrities-without-permission?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds America is becoming a nation of economic pessimists. WSJ reports: A new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll [PDF] finds that the share of people who say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living fell to 25%, a record low in surveys dating to 1987. More than three-quarters said they lack confidence that life for the next generation will be better than their own, the poll found. Nearly 70% of people said they believe the American dream -- that if you work hard, you will get ahead -- no longer holds true or never did, the highest level in nearly 15 years of surveys. Republicans in the survey were less pessimistic than Democrats, reflecting the longstanding trend that the party holding the White House has a rosier view of the economy. An index that combined six poll questions found that 55% of Republicans, as well as 90% of Democrats, held a negative view of prospects for themselves and their children. The discontent reaches across demographic lines. By large majorities, both women and men held a pessimistic view in the combined questions. So did both younger and older adults, those with and without a college degree and respondents with more than $100,000 in household income, as well as those with less. https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/164215/americans-lose-faith-that-hard-work-leads-to-economic-gains-wsj-norc-poll-finds?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/164215/americans-lose-faith-that-hard-work-leads-to-economic-gains-wsj-norc-poll-finds?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Workplace Jargon Hurts Employee Morale and Collaboration, Study Finds alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: You've probably heard it before in a meeting: 'Let's touch base offline to align our bandwidth on this workflow.' Corporate jargon like this is easy to laugh at -- but its negative impact in the office can be serious. According to a new study, using too much jargon in the workplace can hurt employees' ability to process messages, leading them to experience negative feelings and making them feel less confident. In turn, they're less likely to reach out and ask for or share information with their colleagues. "You need people to be willing to collaborate, share ideas and look for more information if they don't understand something at work," said Olivia Bullock, Ph.D., an assistant professor of advertising at the University of Florida and co-author of the new study. "And jargon might actually be impeding that information flow across teams." Age made a difference, though. Older workers had a harder time processing jargon, but were more likely to intend to ask for more information to clarify the message. Younger employees were less likely to seek and share information when confused by jargon. "It gives credence to the idea that younger people are more vulnerable to these workplace dynamics," Bullock said. "If you're onboarding younger employees, explain everything clearly." The findings have been published in the International Journal of Business Communication. https://slashdot.org/story/25/08/26/2318239/workplace-jargon-hurts-employee-morale-and-collaboration-study-finds?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://slashdot.org/story/25/08/26/2318239/workplace-jargon-hurts-employee-morale-and-collaboration-study-finds?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

The AI-Powered PDF Marks the End of an Era The era of software without embedded AI assistants is increasingly ending as Adobe launches Acrobat Studio, adding collaborative AI workspaces to the 32-year-old PDF format. The new platform allows users to upload multiple documents into "PDF spaces" where personalized chatbot assistants parse and answer questions about their contents. Adobe began integrating generative AI into Acrobat last year and now positions this release as the format's biggest transformation since its 1993 debut. The shift arrives amid growing user fatigue with AI features proliferating across everyday applications -- a Pew Research Center report found US adults more concerned than excited about AI's impact on their lives. Adobe's move cements 2025 as the year generative AI became inescapable in essential software, fundamentally altering how users interact with documents that once replicated the familiarity of paper. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/21/1416226/the-ai-powered-pdf-marks-the-end-of-an-era?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/21/1416226/the-ai-powered-pdf-marks-the-end-of-an-era?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

China Isolates Itself From Worldwide Web For Over an Hour A complete shutdown of encrypted web traffic isolated China from the global internet for 74 minutes Wednesday morning, blocking citizens from accessing foreign websites and disrupting international business operations that depend on secure connections to offshore servers. The Great Firewall began injecting forged TCP RST+ACK packets to terminate all connections on port 443 at 00:34 Beijing time on August 20, according to activist group Great Firewall Report. The standard HTTPS port carries most modern web traffic, meaning Chinese users lost access to virtually all foreign-hosted websites while companies including Apple and Tesla couldn't connect to servers powering their basic services. The blocking device didn't match known Great Firewall hardware fingerprints, suggesting Beijing either deployed new censorship equipment or experienced a configuration error. No significant events requiring information blackout occurred during the outage window. Pakistan's internet traffic dropped significantly hours before China's incident, potentially connected through shared firewall technology. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/21/0543252/china-isolates-itself-from-worldwide-web-for-over-an-hour?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/21/0543252/china-isolates-itself-from-worldwide-web-for-over-an-hour?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Whistleblower Alleges Meta Artificially Boosted Shops Ads Performance An anonymous reader quotes a report from Adweek: Meta wanted advertisers to believe its ecommerce ad product, Shops ads, was outperforming the competition, per a whistleblower complaint filed in a U.K. court. The former employee alleges the social media giant artificially inflated return on ad spend (ROAS) by counting shipping fees as revenue, subsidizing bids in ad auctions, and applying undisclosed discounts. The complaint, viewed by ADWEEK, was filed with the London Central Employment Tribunal on Wednesday (August 20) by Samujjal Purkayastha, a former product manager on Meta's Shops ads team. The document claims Meta artificially inflated performance metrics to push brands toward its fledgling ecommerce ad product. The company's motivation, the complaint says, was in part to combat Apple's 2021 privacy changes that cut the troves of iOS tracking information that had long powered Meta's ad machine. Meta's former chief financial officer (CFO), David Wehner, said the changes would cost "on the order of $10 billion" in losses during the company's Q4 2021 earnings call. User purchases on Facebook or Instagram Shops pages would provide more first-party data, however. Purkayastha, who joined Meta (then Facebook) in 2020 as a product manager on the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Applied Research team, was reassigned to the Shops Ads team in March 2022 and remained at the company until Feb. 19, 2025, when he was terminated. He alleged that during internal reviews in early 2024, Meta data scientists found the return on ad spend (ROAS) from Shops ads had been inflated between 17% and 19%. This discrepancy stemmed from Meta counting shipping fees and taxes as part of a sale, even though that money never went to merchants, he alleged. The company's other ad products exclude those figures, in line with competitors like Google, the complaint reads. Without including the fees and taxes, Shops ads performed no better than Meta's traditional ads, Purkayastha claimed. "This was significant," the complaint reads. "In addition to the ROAS performance metric being overstated by nearly a fifth, it meant that, rather than having exceeded our primary target, the Shops Ads team had in fact missed it once the figure was reduced to take account of the artificial inflation." Purkayastha raised these concerns with senior leadership in multiple meetings between 2022 and 2024, and is now seeking interim relief through his employment tribunal filing to have his former position reinstated. A Meta spokesperson told ADWEEK the company is "actively defending these proceedings," adding that "allegations related to the integrity of our advertising practices are without merit and we have full confidence in our performance review processes." https://meta.slashdot.org/story/25/08/21/0258229/whistleblower-alleges-meta-artificially-boosted-shops-ads-performance?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed at Slashdot. https://meta.slashdot.org/story/25/08/21/0258229/whistleblower-alleges-meta-artificially-boosted-shops-ads-performance?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed