Following more than two years of controversy, the chief executive officer of Pegasus spyware creator NSO Group is stepping down. On Sunday, co-founder and outgoing CEO Shalev Hulio said he was handing over operations of the company to chief operating officer Yaron Shohat as part of a restructuring that will see it refocus on NATO-member countries. According to Bloomberg, NSO is also cutting its headcount. The firm reportedly plans to lay off about 100 employees before it appoints a permanent replacement for Hulio.
The restructuring comes as NSO Group continues to face scrutiny from both governments and other tech companies. In November 2021, the US Commerce Department added NSO to its Entity List, effectively banning American companies from doing business with the firm unless they obtain explicit permission to do so. That same month, Apple sued NSO to “hold it accountable” for enabling governments to spy on activists and journalists.
"The company’s products remain in high demand with governments and law enforcement agencies because of its cutting-edge technology and proven ability to assist these customers in fighting crime and terror," Shohat said. "NSO will ensure that the company's groundbreaking technologies are used for rightful and worthy purposes."
Netflix’s forthcoming ad-supported tier could include programming without commercials. According to Bloomberg, the company doesn’t plan to run ads during original movies, at least when they first premiere on the platform. In doing so, Netflix reportedly hopes to keep its service appealing to high-profile filmmakers who may find the idea of commercials interrupting their stories unappealing.
Content for children could also be free of ads. Netflix has reportedly told partners it won’t run commercials during original kids programming. Some of the company’s current agreements would not allow it to run ads during licensed content either. Netflix may feel serving commercials to kids would be more trouble than it’s worth. In 2019, Google paid $170 million for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act after the FTC found YouTube had illegally collected data from kids.
Bloomberg warns Netflix is still finalizing plans for its ad-supported tier, and the company’s strategy could change between now and when the service eventually launches. On that note, code recently found by developer Steve Moser suggested the new tier could also drop support for offline viewing. Netflix quickly responded to the rumor by pointing out it was still in the “early days of deciding how to launch a lower priced, ad-supported option.”
For the second time this year, Tesla is increasing the price of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature. On Saturday, Elon Musk tweeted that the upfront cost of the driver assistance software would increase to $15,000 on September 5th. The automaker will honor the current $12,000 price on orders made before that date but will deliver those vehicles at a later date. "Note, you can upgrade your existing car to FSD in 2 mins via the Tesla app," Musk added. He didn't say if Tesla would increase the price of its FSD subscription plans. Depending on the current Autopilot capabilities of your Tesla, adding the software currently costs as much as $199 per month.
Tesla has consistently increased the price of its Full Self-Driving feature over the years. When the company first began offering FSD as a separate option from Autopilot, it cost consumers $5,000 to add the software during configuration and $7,000 post-delivery. At the start of the year, the price of FSD went from from $10,000 to $12,000. Elon Musk telegraphed Tesla would increase the price of FSD yet again back in July when he said the software was "ridiculously cheap" at $12,000 and that a price hike would mean the difference between Tesla "being worth a lot money or worth basically zero."
After wide release of FSD Beta 10.69.2, price of FSD will rise to $15k in North America on September 5th.
Current price will be honored for orders made before Sept 5th, but delivered later.
The trend of our gadgets and infrastructure constantly, often invasively, monitoring their users shows little sign of slowing — not when there's so much money to be made. Of course it hasn't been all bad for humanity, what with AI's help in advancing medical, communications and logistics tech in recent years. In his new book, Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales, Dr. Toby Walsh, explores the duality of potential that artificial intelligence/machine learning systems offer and, in the excerpt below, how to claw back a bit of your privacy from an industry built for omniscience.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the total entropy of a system – the amount of disorder – only ever increases. In other words, the amount of order only ever decreases. Privacy is similar to entropy. Privacy is only ever decreasing. Privacy is not something you can take back. I cannot take back from you the knowledge that I sing Abba songs badly in the shower. Just as you can’t take back from me the fact that I found out about how you vote.
There are different forms of privacy. There’s our digital online privacy, all the information about our lives in cyberspace. You might think our digital privacy is already lost. We have given too much of it to companies like Facebook and Google. Then there’s our analogue offline privacy, all the information about our lives in the physical world. Is there hope that we’ll keep hold of our analogue privacy?
The problem is that we are connecting ourselves, our homes and our workplaces to lots of internet-enabled devices: smartwatches, smart light bulbs, toasters, fridges, weighing scales, running machines, doorbells and front door locks. And all these devices are interconnected, carefully recording everything we do. Our location. Our heartbeat. Our blood pressure. Our weight. The smile or frown on our face. Our food intake. Our visits to the toilet. Our workouts.
These devices will monitor us 24/7, and companies like Google and Amazon will collate all this information. Why do you think Google bought both Nest and Fitbit recently? And why do you think Amazon acquired two smart home companies, Ring and Blink Home, and built their own smartwatch? They’re in an arms race to know us better.
The benefits to the companies our obvious. The more they know about us, the more they can target us with adverts and products. There’s one of Amazon’s famous ‘flywheels’ in this. Many of the products they will sell us will collect more data on us. And that data will help target us to make more purchases.
The benefits to us are also obvious. All this health data can help make us live healthier. And our longer lives will be easier, as lights switch on when we enter a room, and thermostats move automatically to our preferred temperature. The better these companies know us, the better their recommendations will be. They’ll recommend only movies we want to watch, songs we want to listen to and products we want to buy.
But there are also many potential pitfalls. What if your health insurance premiums increase every time you miss a gym class? Or your fridge orders too much comfort food? Or your employer sacks you because your smartwatch reveals you took too many toilet breaks?
With our digital selves, we can pretend to be someone that we are not. We can lie about our preferences. We can connect anonymously with VPNs and fake email accounts. But it is much harder to lie about your analogue self. We have little control over how fast our heart beats or how widely the pupils of our eyes dilate.
We’ve already seen political parties manipulate how we vote based on our digital footprint. What more could they do if they really understood how we respond physically to their messages? Imagine a political party that could access everyone’s heartbeat and blood pressure. Even George Orwell didn’t go that far.
Worse still, we are giving this analogue data to private companies that are not very good at sharing their profits with us. When you send your saliva off to 23AndMe for genetic testing, you are giving them access to the core of who you are, your DNA. If 23AndMe happens to use your DNA to develop a cure for a rare genetic disease that you possess, you will probably have to pay for that cure. The 23AndMe terms and conditions make this very clear:
You understand that by providing any sample, having your Genetic Information processed, accessing your Genetic Information, or providing Self-Reported Information, you acquire no rights in any research or commercial products that may be developed by 23andMe or its collaborating partners. You specifically understand that you will not receive compensation for any research or commercial products that include or result from your Genetic Information or Self-Reported Information.
A Private Future
How, then, might we put safeguards in place to preserve our privacy in an AI-enabled world? I have a couple of simple fixes. Some regulatory and could be implemented today. Others are technological and are something for the future, when we have AI that is smarter and more capable of defending our privacy.
The technology companies all have long terms of service and privacy policies. If you have lots of spare time, you can read them. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University calculated that the average internet user would have to spend 76 work days each year just to read all the things that they have agreed to online. But what then? If you don’t like what you read, what choices do you have?
All you can do today, it seems, is log off and not use their service. You can’t demand greater privacy than the technology companies are willing to provide. If you don’t like Gmail reading your emails, you can’t use Gmail. Worse than that, you’d better not email anyone with a Gmail account, as Google will read any emails that go through the Gmail system.
So here’s a simple alternative. All digital services must provide four changeable levels of privacy.
Level 1: They keep no information about you beyond your username, email and password.
Level 2: They keep information on you to provide you with a better service, but they do not share this information with anyone.
Level 3: They keep information on you that they may share with sister companies.
Level 4: They consider the information that they collect on you as public.
And you can change the level of privacy with one click from the settings page. And any changes are retrospective, so if you select Level 1 privacy, the company must delete all information they currently have on you, beyond your username, email and password. In addition, there’s a requirement that all data beyond Level 1 privacy is deleted after three years unless you opt in explicitly for it to be kept. Think of this as a digital right to be forgotten.
I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. My many youthful transgressions have, thankfully, been lost in the mists of time. They will not haunt me when I apply for a new job or run for political office. I fear, however, for young people today, whose every post on social media is archived and waiting to be printed off by some prospective employer or political opponent. This is one reason why we need a digital right to be forgotten.
More friction may help. Ironically, the internet was invented to remove frictions – in particular, to make it easier to share data and communicate more quickly and effortlessly. I’m starting to think, however, that this lack of friction is the cause of many problems. Our physical highways have speed and other restrictions. Perhaps the internet highway needs a few more limitations too?
One such problem is described in a famous cartoon: ‘On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.’ If we introduced instead a friction by insisting on identity checks, then certain issues around anonymity and trust might go away. Similarly, resharing restrictions on social media might help prevent the distribution of fake news. And profanity filters might help prevent posting content that inflames.
On the other side, other parts of the internet might benefit from fewer frictions. Why is it that Facebook can get away with behaving badly with our data? One of the problems here is there’s no real alternative. If you’ve had enough of Facebook’s bad behaviour and log off – as I did some years back – then it is you who will suffer most. You can’t take all your data, your social network, your posts, your photos to some rival social media service. There is no real competition. Facebook is a walled garden, holding onto your data and setting the rules. We need to open that data up and thereby permit true competition.
For far too long the tech industry has been given too many freedoms. Monopolies are starting to form. Bad behaviours are becoming the norm. Many internet businesses are poorly aligned with the public good.
Any new digital regulation is probably best implemented at the level of nation-states or close-knit trading blocks. In the current climate of nationalism, bodies such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization are unlikely to reach useful consensus. The common values shared by members of such large transnational bodies are too weak to offer much protection to the consumer.
The European Union has led the way in regulating the tech sector. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the upcoming Digital Service Act (DSA) and Digital Market Act (DMA) are good examples of Europe’s leadership in this space. A few nation-states have also started to pick up their game. The United Kingdom introduced a Google tax in 2015 to try to make tech companies pay a fair share of tax. And shortly after the terrible shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, the Australian government introduced legislation to fine companies up to 10 per cent of their annual revenue if they fail to take down abhorrent violent material quickly enough. Unsurprisingly, fining tech companies a significant fraction of their global annual revenue appears to get their attention.
It is easy to dismiss laws in Australia as somewhat irrelevant to multinational companies like Google. If they’re too irritating, they can just pull out of the Australian market. Google’s accountants will hardly notice the blip in their worldwide revenue. But national laws often set precedents that get applied elsewhere. Australia followed up with its own Google tax just six months after the United Kingdom. California introduced its own version of the GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), just a month after the regulation came into effect in Europe. Such knock-on effects are probably the real reason that Google has argued so vocally against Australia’s new Media Bargaining Code. They greatly fear the precedent it will set.
That leaves me with a technological fix. At some point in the future, all our devices will contain AI agents helping to connect us that can also protect our privacy. AI will move from the centre to the edge, away from the cloud and onto our devices. These AI agents will monitor the data entering and leaving our devices. They will do their best to ensure that data about us that we don’t want shared isn’t.
We are perhaps at the technological low point today. To do anything interesting, we need to send data up into the cloud, to tap into the vast computational resources that can be found there. Siri, for instance, doesn’t run on your iPhone but on Apple’s vast servers. And once your data leaves your possession, you might as well consider it public. But we can look forward to a future where AI is small enough and smart enough to run on your device itself, and your data never has to be sent anywhere.
This is the sort of AI-enabled future where technology and regulation will not simply help preserve our privacy, but even enhance it. Technical fixes can only take us so far. It is abundantly clear that we also need more regulation. For far too long the tech industry has been given too many freedoms. Monopolies are starting to form. Bad behaviours are becoming the norm. Many internet businesses are poorly aligned with the public good.
Digital regulation is probably best implemented at the level of nation-states or close-knit trading blocks. In the current climate of nationalism, bodies such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization are unlikely to reach useful consensus. The common values shared by members of such large transnational bodies are too weak to offer much protection to the consumer.
The European Union has led the way in regulating the tech sector. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the upcoming Digital Service Act (DSA) and Digital Market Act (DMA) are good examples of Europe’s leadership in this space. A few nation-states have also started to pick up their game. The United Kingdom introduced a Google tax in 2015 to try to make tech companies pay a fair share of tax. And shortly after the terrible shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, the Australian government introduced legislation to fine companies up to 10 per cent of their annual revenue if they fail to take down abhorrent violent material quickly enough. Unsurprisingly, fining tech companies a significant fraction of their global annual revenue appears to get their attention.
It is easy to dismiss laws in Australia as somewhat irrelevant to multinational companies like Google. If they’re too irritating, they can just pull out of the Australian market. Google’s accountants will hardly notice the blip in their worldwide revenue. But national laws often set precedents that get applied elsewhere. Australia followed up with its own Google tax just six months after the United Kingdom. California introduced its own version of the GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), just a month after the regulation came into effect in Europe. Such knock-on effects are probably the real reason that Google has argued so vocally against Australia’s new Media Bargaining Code. They greatly fear the precedent it will set.
Every August for the past two years, Chinese developer Game Science Studio has released new gameplay footage from its upcoming action RPG Black Myth: Wukong. Not one to miss a beat, it has done the same this year. On Friday, the studio shared a new eight-minute gameplay trailer and six-minute in-game cutscene. Much like last year’s Unreal Engine 5 reveal, the former is partly a showcase for NVIDIA’s DLSS AI-powered upscaling tech, and you can see what a difference it – and a year of additional work – has meant for the game’s framerate. Compared to last year’s trailer, the action is smoother and there are fewer framerate drops.
We also see Game Science Studio iterate on From Software’s Souls formula in a few interesting ways. One of my favorites involves a plant the protagonist goes to pick up about a third of the way through the clip. When they go to pull it from the ground, the plant turns out to be an enemy that can root the player in place, leaving them vulnerable to its hard-hitting sweep attacks. It’s a fun twist on From Software’s mimic chests that should force you always to be on your toes. As for the cinematic trailer, it offers a fresh look at Wukong’s Journey to the West-inspired tale. It’s hard to say how the scene we see will fit into the broader story Game Science hopes to tell, but the studio obviously has a talent for animation.
Unfortunately, neither trailer ends with a release date for the game. Back in 2020, Game Science Studio said it was hoping to bring Black Myth: Wukong to PC and consoles by 2023.
Days Gone may never get a proper sequel, but its post-apocalyptic story could eventually make its way to the silver screen. According to Deadline, Sony’s PlayStation Productions unit is developing a film adaptation of the 2019 game. Outlander actor Sam Heughan is reportedly set to star in a script penned by Up in the Air and X-Men: First Class writer Sheldon Turner. Deadline reports Turner envisions the final film being a “love ballad to motorcycle movies.”
After greenlighting adaptations of critically acclaimed games like The Last of Us and Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone may seem like an unusual choice from Sony. After all, while the game has sold 9 million copies to date, it’s one of the company’s least well-received first-party titles in recent memory. However, since Sony decided to port Days Gone toPC, it has enjoyed newfound success. Search for the game on YouTube, and you’ll find countless videos trying to answer the question of whether you should play Days Gone in 2022. Almost every video on the subject agrees: it’s an experience worth your time. Steam reviews tell much the same story. Across 26,146 submissions, it has a “Very Positive” rating. If there's a project for Sony to take a risk on, it's Days Gone.
A team of scientists may have found a safe and affordable way to destroy “forever chemicals.” PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are found in many household items, including non-stick Teflon pans and dental floss. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, at least 12,000 such substances exist today. They all share one common feature between them: a carbon-fluorine backbone that is one of the strongest known bonds in organic chemistry. It’s what gives PFAS-treated cookware its non-stick quality. However, that same characteristic can make those substances harmful to humans.
Since they’re so durable from a molecular perspective, PFAS can stay in soil and water for generations. Scientists have shown that prolonged exposure to them can lead to an increased risk of some cancers, reduced immunity and developmental effects on children. Researchers have spent years trying to find a way to destroy the carbon-fluorine bond that makes PFAS so stubborn, but a breakthrough could be in sight.
In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, a group of chemists from UCLA, Northwestern University and China found that a mixture of sodium hydroxide, a chemical used in lye, and an organic solvent called dimethyl sulfoxide was effective at breaking down a large subgroup of PFAS known as perfluoro carboxylic acids or PFCAs. When lead author Brittany Trang heated the mixture between 175 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit (about 79 to 121 degrees Celsius), it began breaking down the bonds between the PFAS molecules. After a few days, the mixture can even reduce any fluorine byproducts into harmless molecules. The sodium hydroxide is part of what makes the mixture so potent. It bonds with PFAS molecules after the dimethyl sulfoxide softens them and hastens their breakdown.
Professor William Dichtel, one of the study's co-authors, told The New York Timesthere’s a lot of work to be done before the solution works outside the lab.There’s also the enormity of the problem. In February, scientists estimated that humans are putting approximately 50,000 tons of PFAS chemicals into the atmosphere every year. Another recent study found that rainwater everywhere on Earth is unsafe to drink due to the ubiquity of those substances. However, scientists are understandably excited about Trang’s discovery since it may help researchers find other novel ways to destroy PFAS.
Jurassic World Dominion will begin streaming on September 2nd, Peacock announced on Friday. The service will host two versions of the film. In addition to the original theatrical cut, fans can watch an extended edition that is 14 minutes longer and includes an alternate opening. If you weren’t a fan of the latest movie, Peacock is also adding Jurassic Park, The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3. All three films will arrive on September 1st.
As The Verge points out, Dominion’s move toPeacock isn’t a surprise. At the end of last year, NBCUniversal said the “majority” of its films would appear on the streaming service, with most making the jump as little as 45 days after their theatrical debut. By September 2nd, it will have been 84 days since Dominion debuted in theaters. The longer wait probably has something to do with Dominion being the year's second highest-grossing film.
Imagine if your employer only paid you for the hours you were actively working on your computer. Time spent on the phone, doing tasks on paper or reading isn't part of your compensation since your job can't track those things with monitoring software. It's no far-fetched scenario — it's already happening. Companies are tracking, recording and ranking employees in the name of efficiently and accountability. And as you read this piece, a simulation shows you what it's like to be monitored.
A 29-year-old man sought help from online mental-health startup Done, a company that "prescribes stimulants like Adderall in video calls as short as 10 minutes." Band was already in recovery and lax patient monitoring didn't keep adequate tabs on him. Done advertises on social platforms, "promoting a one-minute ADHD assessment ahead of its 30-minute evaluations" before charging "a $79 monthly service fee for 'worry-free refills' and clinician responses to questions."
Neuralink, a company co-founded by Elon Musk, has been working on an implantable brain–machine interface since 2016. While it previously demonstrated its progress by showing a Macaque monkey controlling the cursor in a game of Pong, it has yet to start human trials. Now, according to Reuters, Musk has reached out to rival company Synchron in recent weeks to discuss a potential investment.
It's unclear what kind of deal Musk has offered — whether it's a collaboration or a financial investment —since none of the players responded or confirmed the report with the news organization. Reuters' sources also said that a deal isn't certain and that Synchron has yet to decide whether to accept Musk's offer. Apparently, the executive approached Synchron CEO after expressing his frustration to Neuralink staff over the company's slow progress.
Neuralink announced way back in 2019 that it would seek approval for human trials in 2020. In January of this year, the company started looking for a clinical trial director who would oversee the testing of its medical device on human subjects. However, that has yet to happen, and the FDA has yet to reveal how far along Neuralink is in the process of securing its approval.
Meanwhile, Synchron announced in July that it had implanted its brain-computer interface into the motor cortex of a human patient in the US for the first time. Doctors in New York's Mount Sinai West did so as part of the company's COMMAND trial, which is aiming to examine the safety of Synchron's implant in patients with severe paralysis. The company also completed a study in Australia, wherein four people were determined to still be safe even after a year with its implant.
Like Neuralink, Synchron is also hoping to provide people with limited mobility the ability to control devices like smartphones and computers with their minds. That will give them the independence to email, text and do various digital tasks. Earlier this year, Max Hodak, the Neuralink co-founder who left the company in 2021, revealed that he took on an advisory role with Synchron. He also financially invested in the company "given [his] excitement for what they're doing."
It's worth noting, though, that Musk reportedly held discussions with other Neuralink rivals in the past. Reuters says he also approached brain-machine interface developer Paradromics in 2020, but those talks were ultimately abandoned.
