Month: February 2021

Enlarge / Former Apple hardware engineering leader Dan Riccio. (credit: Apple)

A couple of weeks ago, Apple announced that longtime hardware engineering chief Dan Riccio will step down from his role to focus entirely on a "new project" within the company. According to yet another report at Bloomberg based on sources with knowledge of Apple's plans today, the project Riccio has focused his energies on is Apple's upcoming augmented reality, virtual reality, or mixed reality headset.

Development of an AR headset at Apple seems to have hit a snag or two under current project lead Mike Rockwell, though the report does not outline exactly which obstacles have emerged. While Rockwell will remain in charge of day-to-day work on the project, Riccio will have "ultimate oversight" over the company's AR/VR efforts, which are said to involve "well over a thousand engineers."

Riccio had already handed top-level management of most current consumer products like the iPhone to an executive named John Ternus. Apple announced Ternus will replace Riccio as the head of hardware engineering overall. The latest news indicates that he has also handed development of new camera and display technology to Johny Srouji, the executive who spearheaded the design and engineering of Apple Silicon.

Enlarge / Vials in front of the AstraZeneca British biopharmaceutical company logo are seen in this creative photo taken on 18 November 2020. (credit: Getty| NurPhoto)

Dismal preliminary data on AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa—where the B.1.351/ 501Y.V2 coronavirus variant is spreading widely—lead the government there to rethink its vaccination rollout and raised further international concern about the variant.

But the small study has so many limitations and caveats, experts caution that drawing any conclusions from it is difficult.

The study, which has not been published or peer-reviewed but presented in a press conference Sunday, began in June and enrolled only around 2,000 participants, about half of which received a placebo. Early in the study—before B.1.351 emerged—the vaccine appeared over 70 percent effective at preventing mild-to-moderate cases of COVID-19. That is largely in line with the conclusion of an international Phase III trial released by AstraZeneca and vaccine co-developer Oxford University, which showed mixed results for the replication-deficient adenovirus-based vaccine but an overall efficacy of around 70 percent.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

A trio of Democratic Senators has taken this administration's first stab at Section 230 reform with a new bill that would make platforms, including giants such as Facebook and Twitter, liable for certain limited categories of dangerous content. Unfortunately, although the bill's authors try to thread a tricky needle carefully, critics warn that bad-faith actors could nonetheless easily weaponize the bill as written against both platforms and other users.

The bill (PDF), dubbed the SAFE TECH Act, seeks not to repeal Section 230 (as some Republicans have proposed) but instead to amend it with new definitions of speakers and new exceptions from the law's infamous liability shield.

"A law meant to encourage service providers to develop tools and policies to support effective moderation has instead conferred sweeping immunity on online providers even when they do nothing to address foreseeable, obvious and repeated misuse of their products and services to cause harm," said Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who introduced the bill. "This bill doesn’t interfere with free speech—it’s about allowing these platforms to finally be held accountable for harmful, often criminal behavior enabled by their platforms to which they have turned a blind eye for too long."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Rafe Swan)

The Biden administration has abandoned a Trump-era lawsuit that sought to block California's net neutrality law. In a court filing today, the US Department of Justice said it "hereby gives notice of its voluntary dismissal of this case." Shortly after, the court announced that the case is "dismissed in its entirety" and "all pending motions in this action are denied as moot."

The case began when Trump's DOJ sued California in September 2018 in US District Court for the Eastern District of California, trying to block a state net neutrality law similar to the US net neutrality law repealed by the Ajit Pai-led FCC. Though Pai's FCC lost an attempt to impose a blanket, nationwide preemption of any state net neutrality law, the US government's lawsuit against the California law was moving forward in the final months of the Trump administration.

The Biden DOJ's voluntary dismissal of the case puts an end to that. "I am pleased that the Department of Justice has withdrawn this lawsuit," FCC Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said today. "When the FCC, over my objection, rolled back its net neutrality policies, states like California sought to fill the void with their own laws. By taking this step, Washington is listening to the American people, who overwhelmingly support an open Internet, and is charting a course to once again make net neutrality the law of the land."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Someone broke into the computer system of a water treatment plant in Florida and tried to poison drinking water for a municipality’s more than 13,000 residents, officials said on Monday.

The intrusion occurred on Friday evening, when an unknown person remotely accessed the computer interface used to adjust the chemicals that treat drinking water for Oldsmar, a small city that’s about 16 miles northwest of Tampa. The intruder changed the level of sodium hydroxide to 11,100 parts per million, a significant increase from the normal amount of 100 ppm, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in a Monday morning press conference.

Better known as lye, sodium hydroxide is used in small amounts to treat the acidity of water and to remove metals. It’s also the active ingredient in liquid drain cleaners. It higher levels, it's toxic. Had the change not been reversed almost immediately, it would have raised the amount of chemical to toxic levels.

Enlarge / Parler's logo. (credit: Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado)

A congressional oversight committee is investigating whether Parler has financial ties to Russian entities, citing reports that the right-wing social network "allowed Russian disinformation to flourish" before the election and hosted calls for violence before a Trump-incited mob stormed the Capitol on January 6. The committee's chairwoman sent a letter to Parler COO Jeffrey Wernick today, demanding documents on Parler's ownership, potential ties to Russian individuals or entities, and reported negotiations between Parler and the Trump Organization.

"Parler reportedly allowed Russian disinformation to flourish on its platform prior to the November 2020 election, facilitating Russia's campaign to sow chaos in the American electorate," US Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, wrote in the letter to Wernick. "Although similar disinformation was removed by other social media platforms, it was allowed to remain on Parler. When US hosting services cut ties with Parler for repeatedly failing to moderate content advocating violence, Parler re-emerged on a Russian hosting service, DDos-Guard, which has ties to the Russian government and counts the Russian Ministry of Defense as one of its clients."

Maloney also cited a BuzzFeed report that said, "The Trump Organization negotiated on behalf of then-president Donald Trump to make Parler his primary social network, but it had a condition: an ownership stake in return for joining." Parler offered Trump's company a 40 percent ownership stake but negotiations "were ultimately derailed by the events of January 6," the report said.