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The Linkielist

Regulators Crack Down on Crypto Exchange Binance in UK, Japan, Germany, and Ontario, Canada

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Authorities in the U.K. and Japan took aim at affiliates of Binance Holdings Ltd., the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange network, in the latest regulatory crackdown on the wildly popular trade in bitcoin and other digital assets. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, the country’s lead financial regulator, told consumers Saturday that Binance’s local unit wasn’t permitted to conduct operations related to regulated financial activities…

Binance Markets Ltd., the company’s U.K. arm, applied to be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority and withdrew its application on May 17. “A significantly high number of cryptoasset businesses are not meeting the required standards” under money-laundering regulations, said a spokesperson for the FCA in an email. “Of the firms we’ve assessed to date, over 90% have withdrawn applications following our intervention.”

Japan’s financial watchdog issued a statement on June 25, saying that Binance isn’t registered to do business in the country…

As of April, Binance operated the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, allowing tens of billions of dollars of trades to pass through its networks, according to data provider CryptoCompare. It was founded in 2017 and initially based in China, later moving offices to Japan and Malta. It recently said it is a decentralized organization with no headquarters… The FCA move doesn’t ban customers from using Binance completely; U.K. customers can continue to use Binance’s non-U.K. operations for activities the FCA doesn’t directly regulate, such as buying and selling direct holdings in bitcoin.
The Financial Times called the move “one of the most significant moves any global regulator has made against Binance” and “a sign of how regulators are cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry over concerns relating to its potential role in illicit activities such as money laundering and fraud, and over often weak consumer protection.” But more countries are also taking action, Reuters reports: Last month, Bloomberg reported that officials from the U.S. Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service who probe money laundering and tax offences had sought information from individuals with insight into Binance’s business. In April, Germany’s financial regulator BaFin warned the exchange risked being fined for offering digital tokens without an investor prospectus.
And CoinDesk adds: Binance is no longer open for business in Canada’s most populous province, apparently choosing to close shop rather than meet the fate of other cryptocurrency exchanges that have had actions filed against them for allegedly failing to comply with Ontario securities laws.

Source: Regulators Crack Down on Crypto Exchange Binance in UK, Japan, Germany, and Ontario, Canada – Slashdot

NFC Flaw Lets Hacker Break ATMs With a Phone

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[…]

According to Wired, however, at least one researcher has found a way to avoid most of this trouble, drawing cash from ATMs like magic with a simple flick of his wrist. The outlet reported Thursday that Josep Rodriguez, a researcher and consultant at security firm IOActive, has built up a collection of bugs affecting NFC systems—a.k.a. near-field communication—which many modern machines rely on to wirelessly transmit data, including debit and credit card info.

Rodriguez, who’s hired to legally test machines to improve their security, has been able to use NFC readers to trigger what programmers call a “buffer overflow,” or excess of data that corrupts a machine’s memory. This decades-old attack has allowed Rodriguez to exploit ATMs and other point-of-sale machines—think retail store checkout machines—in a variety of ways: capturing payment card info, injecting malware, and even in one case “jackpotting” an ATM, which is exactly what it sounds like:

“Rodriguez has built an Android app that allows his smartphone to mimic those credit card radio communications and exploit flaws in the NFC systems’ firmware. With a wave of his phone, he can exploit a variety of bugs to crash point-of-sale devices, hack them to collect and transmit credit card data, invisibly change the value of transactions, and even lock the devices while displaying a ransomware message.”

According to Wired, Rodriguez has kept his findings under wraps for around a year and is otherwise legally bound not to reveal the identities of certain companies he’s worked for. Nevertheless, being bothered that a decades-old technique is still affecting a host of modern machines, he intends to disclosure more technical details in the coming weeks in an effort to call attention to, as Wired puts it, “the abysmal state of embedded device security more broadly.”

Source: NFC Flaw Lets Hacker Break ATMs With a Phone

Which is why people think Responsible Disclosure is important – ie telling a company about a flaw and then giving them a reasonable time frame to fix it before going public with the full details of the flaw. If you don’t do it, the problem doesn’t get fixed.

Ubisoft Takes Down Fan’s Incredible Far Cry 5 ‘GoldenEye’ Maps

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For the past few years, a YouTuber known as Krollywood has painstakingly recreated every level from GoldenEye 007 inside the level editor of Far Cry 5. This week, Ubisoft removed all of those levels from Far Cry 5 due to a copyright infringement claim.

Kotaku first reported on Krollywood’s efforts earlier this month. Over the course of three years, in an endeavor that tallied more than 1,400 hours, Krollywood recreated every stage from GoldenEye 007, the classic N64 shooter (well, save for the two bonus levels). It was an impressive effort: a modernized recreation of a beloved yet tough-to-find old game. And it looked great, too.

Read More: Here’s GoldenEye 007 Remade From The Ground Up In Far Cry 5

You could find and play these levels yourself by hopping into Far Cry 5’s arcade mode and punching in Krollywood’s username. As of this writing, you no longer can. Ubisoft removed them all from Far Cry 5, a move that Krollywood described as “really sad,” noting that he probably won’t be able to restore them since he’s “on their radar now.”

“I’m really sad—not because of myself or the work I put in the last three years, [but] because of the players who wanna play it or bought Far Cry just to play my levels,” Krollywood told Kotaku in an email today.

When reached for comment, a representative for Ubisoft kicked over this statement:

In following the guidelines within the ‘Terms of Use’, there were maps created within Far Cry 5 arcade that have been removed due to copyright infringement claims from a right [sic] holder received by Ubisoft and are currently unavailable. We respect the intellectual property rights of others and expect our users to do the same. This matter is currently with the map’s creator and the rights holder and we have nothing further to share at this time.

Ubisoft did not immediately respond to follow-up requests asking whether the rights holder mentioned is MGM, which controls the license to the original GoldenEye 007.

The rights around the GoldenEye 007 game have been stuck in a quagmire for decades. Famously, Rare, the developer of the original game, planned a remake for the Xbox 360. That was cancelled in 2008. (Years later, Xbox boss Phil Spencer chalked up the cancellation to the legal rights issues being “challenging.”) That canned remake resurfaced as a full 4K60 longplay via a leak this January, with a playable version making the rounds online shortly after. A Kotaku report concluded: It was fun.

It is further unclear how, exactly, Krollywood’s map remakes in Far Cry 5 harm MGM at all—or how it violates Ubisoft’s terms of service in the first place. Krollywood didn’t use any assets or code from the original game. He didn’t attempt to sell it or otherwise turn a profit. And MGM doesn’t own any of the code from Ubisoft’s open-world shooter.

A sampling of Krollywood’s efforts…Image: Krollywood / Ubisoft
Those corpses represent every attempt to play GoldenEye 007 in any other format than the original game.Image: Krollywood / Ubisoft
Some of the remade levels stoke major wanderlust.Image: Krollywood / Ubisoft

Players just want a taste of nostalgia, and MGM has a track record of shattering the plates before they’re even delivered to the table. (Recall GoldenEye 25, the fan remake of GoldenEye 007 remade entirely in Unreal 4 that was lawyered into oblivion last year.) MGM has further neglected to do anything with the license it’s sitting on—for a game that’s older than the Game Boy Color, by the way. At the end of the day, shooting this latest fan-made project out of the sky comes across as a punitive move, at best.

“In the beginning, I started this project just for me and my best friend, because we loved the original game so much,” Krollywood said. “But there are many GoldenEye fans out there … [The project] found many new fans and I’m so happy about it.”

Source: Ubisoft Takes Down Fan’s Incredible Far Cry 5 ‘GoldenEye’ Maps

Bah. Humbug.

Russia spoofed AIS data to fake British warship’s course days before firing at them from a huge distance in Crimea

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Russia was back up to its age-old spoofing of GPS tracks earlier this week before a showdown between British destroyer HMS Defender and coastguard ships near occupied Crimea in the Black Sea.

Yesterday Defender briefly sailed through Ukrainian waters, triggering the Russian Navy and coastguard into sending patrol boats and anti-shipping aircraft to buzz the British warship in a fruitless effort to divert her away from occupied Crimea’s waters.

Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and has occupied parts of the region, mostly in the Crimean peninsula, ever since. The UK and other NATO allies do not recognise Ukraine as enemy-held territory so Defender was sailing through an ally’s waters – and doing so through a published traffic separation scheme (similar to the TSS in the English Channel), as Defence Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed this afternoon.*

Yet, among yesterday’s drama and tension, Russia had previously spoofed maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals to show Defender and her Dutch flotilla mate HNLMS Evertsen as sailing straight for the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, southwest Crimea. Neither warship was doing that: while Russia was claiming NATO warships were threatening Russia, both vessels were captured on live webcams in another Ukrainian port.

The latest batch of AIS fiddling took place on 17 June, according to naval analyst HI Sutton, writing for the US Naval Institute’s blog: “Despite the AIS track, there is clear evidence that the two warships did not leave Odessa.”

This week’s tensions should remind the world that Russia has no compunction about interfering with widely available tech systems.

[…]

AIS works on an honesty-based system, at its simplest. The all-but-mandatory system (ships below 300 tons are exempt) works through each ship at sea broadcasting its GPS coordinates. Other ships receive those signals and assemble them onto display screens mounted on the vessel’s bridge for crew to monitor, usually as part of an integrated ECDIS system. It’s an insecure system insofar as vulns exist that allow spoofing of AIS data, as first revealed almost a decade ago. Shore stations can also receive and rebroadcast AIS signals, amplifying them – and providing a vector for the unscrupulous to insert their own preferred data.

[…]

AIS spoofing is similar to GPS spoofing in that broadcasting false data can mislead the wider world. Back in 2018, researchers built a GPS-spoofing unit out of a Raspberry Pi, transmitting false location data to confuse a targeted car’s satnav.

This proof-of-concept unit using consumer-grade, readily available equipment merely spells out what nation states such as Russia (and the West, naturally) have been toying with for years. Western GPS spoofing is a fact of life in the Eastern Mediterranean, as frustrated airline pilots and air traffic controllers know all too well, and the effects of AIS spoofing are very similar for those who depend on public datafeeds to keep up with the world around them.

[…]

Source: Russia spoofed AIS data to fake British warship’s course days before Crimea guns showdown • The Register

You Don’t Own What You’ve Bought: Peloton Treadmill Edition

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We’ve written so many stories about how you don’t own what you’ve bought any more due to software controls, DRM, and ridiculous contracts, and it keeps getting worse. The latest such example involves Peloton, which is most known for its extremely expensive stationary bikes with video screens, so that you can take classes (usually on a monthly subscription). I will admit that I don’t quite understand the attraction to them, but so many people swear by them. The company also has branched out into extremely expensive treadmills with the same basic concept

[…]

Peloton announced that they will refund the machine, which costs $4,295, and are working on a mandatory software update that will automatically lock the Tread+ after each use and require a unique password to be used to unlock the machine.

That automatic lock and password idea sounds sensible enough, given the situation, but in order to get it to work, but apparently Peloton hasn’t figured out how to make that work for customers who bought the treadmill and aren’t using its subscription service for classes. The Tread+ does have a “Just Run” mode, in which it acts like a regular treadmill (with the video screen off). But, as Brianna Wu discovered, the company is now saying that the “Just Run” mode now requires a subscription to work with the lock. The company is waiving the cost of such a subscription for three months, and it’s unclear from the email if that means that after the three months they’re hoping to have the “Tread Lock” working even for non-subscription users:

If you can’t see it, the image is an email from Peloton customer support saying:

We care deeply about the safety and well-being of our Members and we created Tread Lock to secure your Tread+ against unauthorized access.

Unfortunately at this time, ‘Just Run’ is no longer accessible without a Peloton Membership.

For this inconvenience, we have waived three months of All-Access Membership for all Tread+ owners. If you don’t see the waivers on your subscription or if you need help reactivating your subscription, please contact our Support team….

Now, it’s possible that the subscription part is necessary to update the software to enable the lock mode, but that seems… weird. After all, there must have been some sort of software upgrade that locked out the “Just Run” mode in the first place.

[…]

 

Source: You Don’t Own What You’ve Bought: Peloton Treadmill Edition | Techdirt

Russian Video Proves Patrol Boat Was Far From British Destroyer When It Fired Warning Shots by Crimea

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The fallout from yesterday’s incident in the Black Sea involving the U.K. Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender and elements of Russia’s military and internal security forces has taken its next turn, with the release of a video showing some of the events from the perspective of a Russian Border Guard patrol ship. The footage clearly shows the Russian vessel opening fire, as the Kremlin had asserted, but it’s also obvious that Defender was so far away at the time that it may well not have been aware this were being directed at it, in line with what British authorities have said.

The video in question was published online by the Russian Ministry of Defense’s official television station, TV Zvezda, and the state-run media outlet RIA Novosti. It was taken from the bridge of a Russian Border Guard Rubin class patrol boat, one of those that purportedly “stopped” HMS Defender yesterday from sailing within what the Kremlin claims are its territorial waters around Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014. The United Kingdom, among many other members of the intentional community, does not recognize Russia’s authority over Crimea.

BBC NEWS SCREENCAP

A Project 22460 Rubin class border patrol vessel moves in close to HMS Defender, as seen in BBC News footage.

The video includes the discussions between the Russian Border Guards and the crew of the British destroyer, with repeated demands from the Russian security forces that HMS Defender leave the area. Two Border Guard vessels are seen trailing the destroyer, while Russian jets pass overhead, and at one point, one of the Russian vessels shadows the British warship closely — a BBC journalist’s account yesterday spoke of one of the Russian vessels getting as close as 100 meters (328 feet).

One of the Border Guards is heard to say that HMS Defender is breaking the rules of innocent passage, a part of international maritime law that allows warships to move through another country’s territorial waters so long as the transit meets various criteria, particularly that it is not intended to challenge the legitimacy of any such maritime boundaries.

After several more warnings, apparently ignored by the British, one of the crew members aboard the Border Guard vessel says, in Russian: “Perform precautionary fire! Perform precautionary fire! Avoid hit! Avoid hit! Fire!”

At that point, we see the AK-630 six-barrel 30mm Gatling gun on the bow of the Border Guard vessel opening fire with several bursts, although at this point the British destroyer is seen on the horizon. Interestingly, in the BBC News report, it’s confirmed that shots were fired by the Russian side, “but they were well out of range.”

After the shots, HMS Defender confirms that it will continue to follow its internationally recognized route into international waters. This suggests that the warship continued its planned passage and the available maritime tracking data doesn’t show it making any obvious changes in course.

The available tracks are also consistent with official British accounts that the destroyer was sailing around 12 miles off the coast of Crimea. While Russia considered this to be “a flagrant violation of international norms and standards,” in the words of Sergei Tsekov, a Russian senator from the Crimea region, for the British, this amounted to “a routine transit [in] an internationally recognized traffic separation corridor,” according to the U.K. Minister of Defense Ben Wallace.

Furthermore, since, as already noted, the United Kingdom does not recognize Russia’s claims over Crimea, the waters in question are considered Ukrainian from the British government’s perspective.

BBC NEWS SCREENCAP

A Crimea-based Russian Navy Be-12 Mail amphibian flies over HMS Defender.

All in all, the video shows that Russia did at least go through the motions of taking some aggressive action, but doesn’t provide conclusive evidence that this was sufficient to actually force HMS Defender out of waters that it claims as its own.

While it’s clear that some kind of warning shots were fired, it’s also plausible that the British may not have realized what these were, and instead connected them to training exercises that were already happening in the vicinity. At least, the British would have been aware of the threat of warning shots, but their response may have been intended to deliberately provoke the Russians.

“We believe the Russians were undertaking a gunnery exercise in the Black Sea and provided the maritime community with prior warning of their activity,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense tweeted yesterday. “No shots were directed at HMS Defender and we do not recognize the claim that bombs were dropped in her path.”

Those bombs were, according to Russian accounts, dropped across the path of the destroyer by a Su-24M Fencer combat jet, to provide an additional warning to the British warship. So far, we have seen no evidence of the bombs actually being dropped, although video from a BBC News report yesterday does at least show a Su-24M in the vicinity seemingly carrying high-explosive bombs. The BBC also reported that the crew of the Defender was aware of the presence of at least 20 Russian military aircraft flying the area over the course of the incident.

BBC NEWS SCREENCAP

A Russian Navy Su-24M buzzes HMS Defender, apparently carrying unguided bombs under its wings and below the fuselage.

Rosoboronexport

An OFAB-500 freefall bomb, as reportedly used by a Russian Su-24M as a warning to the destroyer.

All in all, it seems that this latest footage released by Russia is intended to bolster its account of what happened yesterday, which is based around its military and security forces taking strong action to ward off HMS Defender from what it deemed a territorial violation. Since the incident yesterday, Russian news outlet Kommersant has also published a map showing areas around Crimea that were reportedly temporarily closed for military drills, one of which HMS Defender apparently passed through.

While the British side has not mentioned these apparent restrictions, or whether it was aware of them, it was seemingly entirely deliberate in choosing this particular route for its warship and would have known that it would trigger a response of some kind from Russia. For the British, however, the importance of this incident was in demonstrating its right to innocent passage using a route through internationally recognized waters, while signaling its resolve to its partner Ukraine.

With the largest-ever Sea Breeze exercise due to start next Monday, there is every indication that tensions around Crimea and in the wider Black Sea region will only increase in the coming days, as 32 warships, plus dozens of aircraft, enter these region to commence U.S. Navy-led drills under the watchful eyes of the Russians.

As for the warning shots yesterday, while their effectiveness must be considered debatable at best, the fact that such belligerent actions are now being taken confirms the very differing views that Russia and NATO have when it comes to the movements of naval vessels and aircraft in the Black Sea region.

Source: Russian Video Proves Patrol Boat Was Far From British Destroyer When It Fired Warning Shots

South Africa Africrypt Bitcoin Scam? Cajee Brothers Missing Along With Billions – second huge scam in SA

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A pair of South African brothers have vanished, along with Bitcoin worth $3.6 billion from their cryptocurrency investment platform.

A Cape Town law firm hired by investors says they can’t locate the brothers and has reported the matter to the Hawks, an elite unit of the national police force. It’s also told crypto exchanges across the globe should any attempt be made to convert the digital coins.

Following a surge in Bitcoin’s value in the past year, the disappearance of about 69,000 coins — worth more than $4 billion at their April peak — would represent the biggest-ever dollar loss in a cryptocurrency scam. The incident could spur regulators’ efforts to impose order on the market amid rising cases of fraud.

The first signs of trouble came in April, as Bitcoin was rocketing to a record. Africrypt Chief Operating Officer Ameer Cajee, the elder brother, informed clients that the company was the victim of a hack. He asked them not to report the incident to lawyers and authorities, as it would slow down the recovery process of the missing funds.

Lawyers Hired

Some skeptical investors roped in the law firm, Hanekom Attorneys, and a separate group started liquidation proceedings against Africrypt.

“We were immediately suspicious as the announcement implored investors not to take legal action,” Hanekom Attorneys said in response to emailed questions. “Africrypt employees lost access to the back-end platforms seven days before the alleged hack.”

The firm’s investigation found Africrypt’s pooled funds were transferred from its South African accounts and client wallets, and the coins went through tumblers and mixers — or to other large pools of bitcoin — to make them essentially untraceable.

Calls to a mobile number for Cajee were immediately directed to a voicemail service. He and his brother, Raees, 20, set up Africrypt in 2019 and it provided bumper returns for investors. Calls to Raees also went straight to voicemail. The company website is down.

The saga is unfolding after last year’s collapse of another South African Bitcoin trader, Mirror Trading International. The losses there, involving about 23,000 digital coins, totaled about $1.2 billion in what was called the biggest crypto scam of 2020, according to a report by Chainalysis. Africrypt investors stand to lose three times as much.

While South Africa’s Finance Sector Conduct Authority is also looking into Africrypt, it is currently prohibited from launching a formal investigation because crypto assets are not legally considered financial products, according to the regulator’s head of enforcement, Brandon Topham. The police have not yet responded to a request for comment.

[…]

Source: South Africa Africrypt Bitcoin Scam?: Cajee Brothers Missing Along With Billions – Bloomberg

Hyundai completes deal for controlling interest in Boston Dynamics (walking robodog maker)

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Hyundai this morning announced that it has completed its acquisition of Boston Dynamics. The deal, which values the innovative robotics company at $1.1 billion, was announced in late-2020. The companies have not disclosed any future financial details.

The South Korean automotive giant now owns a controlling interest in Boston Dynamics, previously belonging to SoftBank. The Japanese investment company was effectively a transitional owner, purchasing Boston Dynamics from Google, which owned the company for just over three years.

While its time with Softbank wasn’t much longer than its stint under Google/Alphabet X, Boston Dynamics saw the commercialization of its first two products since launching nearly 30 years ago. The company brought its quadrupedal robot Spot to market and this year announced the (still upcoming) launch of Stretch, an updated version of its warehouse robot, Handle.

In a recent appearance at TechCrunch’s Mobility event, Hyundai’s Ernestine Fu discussed the planned acquisition of an 80% controlling interest in the company. Fu noted that Hyundai’s New Horizon Studios has previewed multiple “walking” car concepts that look poised to build on decades of Boston Dynamics research.

“With New Horizon Studios, the mandate is reimagining what you can do when you combine robotics with traditional wheeled locomotion, like walking robots and walking vehicles,” Fu told TechCrunch. “Obviously the technology that [Boston Dynamics] has put together plays a key role in enabling those sorts of concepts to come to life.”

As it has changed hands over the years, Boston Dynamics has long insisted on maintaining its own research wing, which has given us less commercial technology, like the humanoid robot, Atlas. How this will function under the umbrella of Hyundai remains to be seen, though the company does seem to have a vested interest in maintaining a forward-looking approach.

Source: Hyundai completes deal for controlling interest in Boston Dynamics | TechCrunch

China Bitcoin Crackdown Leads To BTC Price Plummet and also Cheaper Graphics Cards

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With graphics cards seeming harder to get than ever, China’s stricter measures against Bitcoin mining have led to lower prices online in the country.

In Yunnan, the country’s fourth-largest Bitcoin-producing province, authorities have been investigating illegal electrical power use tied to Bitcoin mining and are threatening to cut power to those involved in the practice. As SCMP reports, it’s the latest province to join the country’s clampdown on crypto.

In 2020, China made up 65 percent of Bitcoin’s global hash rate.

SCMP now reports that stricter measures towards Bitcoin are driving down the prices of graphics cards in China. Graphics cards aren’t only used for gaming, but for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as they provide the extra computer power needed in the computations necessary to mine digital currencies.

As the Chinese government has been putting the squeeze on crypto, Sichuan province remained a holdout for mining operations. But, as SCMP adds, Sichuan has called for all mining to cease, dashing the hopes of miners to take advantage of the province’s hydropower. Now, miners are apparently looking at moving operations outside China to friendlier areas.

All of this has caused the prices of graphics cards to drop online in China. In May, the Asus RTX 3060 was commanding as much as 13,499 yuan ($2,085), but SCMP reports that prices have dropped to 4,699 yuan ($725).

That’s not the only thing to drop. According to CNN, the value of Bitcoin has dropped in the wake of China’s measures.

[…]

Source: Bitcoin Crackdown Leads To Cheaper Graphics Cards In China

Turn One of the Nurburgring Nordschleife Named for Sabine Schmitz

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It’s only fitting that Sabine is paid tribute at the track itself, after her much-too-young death back in March, following a fight with cancer. Turn 1 of the Nordschleife has been renamed, becoming Sabine Schmitz Kurve, to honor her at the start of every lap taken at a circuit that is, without doubt, hers.

Porsche

There had already been a commemorative lap led by the 1996 BMW M3 “Eifelblitz” car Sabine won the Nürburgring 24 Hour race with back in 1996 and 1997, driven by her longtime co-driver Johannes Scheid. It was a fitting tribute, as part of the 2021 version of the race, where 11 women racers were among the drivers trying to follow in Sabine’s tire tracks.

Renaming the first corner of the Nordschleife is even better though. Now, whenever you cross the start/finish line at track, Sabine Schmitz will be ahead, and every lap will start with her sending you on your way.

[…]

Source: Turn One of the Nurburgring Nordschleife Named for Sabine Schmitz

‘Atomically thin’ transistors could help make electronic skins a reality

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Stanford researchers have developed a new technique that produces “atomically-thin” transistors under 100 nanometers long. That’s “several times” shorter than the previous best, according to the university.

The team accomplished the feat by overcoming a longstanding hurdle in flexible tech. While ‘2D’ semiconductors are the ideal, they require so much heat to make that they’d melt the flexible plastic. The new approach covers glass-coated silicon with a super-thin semiconductor film (molybdenum disulfide) overlayed with nano-patterened gold electrodes. This produces a film just three atoms thick using a temperature nearing 1,500F — the conventional plastic substrate would have deformed around 680F.

Once the components have cooled, the team can apply the film to the substrate and take a few “additional fabrication steps” to create a whole structure about five microns thick, or a tenth the thickness of human hair. It’s even ideal for low-power use, as it can handle high currents at low voltage.

[…]

Source: ‘Atomically thin’ transistors could help make electronic skins a reality | Engadget

Koenigsegg, the Maker of $3 Million Supercars, Experiments With Volcano Fuel – Bloomberg

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Hypercars with $3 million price tags aren’t usually synonymous with environmental sustainability. Christian von Koenigsegg, founder and chief executive of Koenigsegg Automotive, wants to change that. The Ängelholm, Sweden-based company is experimenting with ultra-high-voltage battery packs and biofuels using emissions from volcanoes to build environmentally “benign” and potentially even carbon-neutral cars, without sacrificing performance.

[…]

If we take a pure electric sports car, they tend to be quite heavy because you need a quite large battery to have enough range and performance. That goes against the sporty nature of the car.

We electrify in a different way with more extreme cell technology for power output. And then we have extreme combustion-engine technology running on renewable fuels, but very good aftertreatment systems, and our free-valve technology where we can really make sure we combust extremely efficiently with very small engines to make the car lighter, more exciting, have better performance, but still being environmentally benign.

What we mean by agnostic is that we mix and match whatever makes the most sense at each given time and for each model. We’re not stuck in traditional combustion technology. The technology we develop there is really next-generation beyond anything else I’ve seen out in the marketplace, and also next-generation electrification, and combining these technologies in an interesting way to make our product stand out and be as competitive as we can with as little environmental footprint as possible.

You don’t have to pollute the planet just because you want to have a fast, interesting sports car.

[…]

there is this technology from Iceland, it was invented there, where they cap the CO2 emittance from semi-active volcanoes and convert that into methanol. And if you take that methanol and you power the plants that do the conversion of other fuels and then power the ship that transports the those fuels to Europe or the U.S. or Asia, wherever it goes, you put the fuel completely CO2-neutral into the vehicle.

And of course with the correct aftertreatment systems, depending on the environment you’re in, you can kind of clean up the particles in the atmosphere while you’re using the engine. So you can be very much environmentally conscious doing that. It’s just a fun aspect of renewable fuels that are not talked so much about, but there are many, many other technologies that are coming up.

[…]

Source: Koenigsegg, the Maker of $3 Million Supercars, Experiments With Volcano Fuel – Bloomberg

Hyperion’s New Hydrogen-Powered XP-1 Supercar Has 1000 Miles of Range, recharges in 5 minutes, 0-60mpg in 3 seconds

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Southern California–based Hyperion Companies, Inc., and its Hyperion Motors division, is banking on cutting-edge, space-grade hydrogen fuel-cell technology to help consumers embrace the electric car market with much more vigor. Hyperion’s first salvo in the battle against combustion is the XP-1 prototype—a futuristic supercar with a claimed 1,016-mile range and the ability to haul to 60 mph in 2.2 seconds. Oh, and the recharge time is less than five minutes.

 

 

The Hyperion XP-1 hydrogen-powered supercar.

The Hyperion XP-1 prototype.  Photo: Courtesy of Hyperion Companies, Inc.

Skeptics of the XP-1’s performance promises should consider three crucial factors: Hyperion was founded nearly a decade ago by a team of PhDs exclusively focused on hydrogen-based power and delivery, and Hyperion works in conjunction with NASA to utilize technologies developed for space travel in commercial applications. Lastly, the organizers of the 24 Hours of Le Mans are planning to add a hydrogen-powered class by 2024, signaling that the element may play a vital part in the future of motorsports.

“Our vehicle represents the answer to ‘why hydrogen?’” says Angelo Kafantaris, Hyperion’s CEO. “It’s a no-compromise car that represents the best that hydrogen fuel-cell technology can be. Hydrogen is the cleanest, most sustainable energy source that’s not been properly utilized.”

[…]

Source: Hyperion’s New Hydrogen-Powered XP-1 Supercar Has 1000 Miles of Range – Robb Report

Hackers Are Selling Data Stolen From Audi and Volkswagen

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On Friday, Volkswagen disclosed a data breach that it said affected 3.3 million customers and interested buyers. On Monday, hackers put the data stolen from the car maker on sale on a notorious hacking forum.

In the sales listing reviewed by Motherboard, a hacker that goes by 000 wrote that the data included email addresses and Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN). The hacker also posted two samples of the data, which included full names, email addresses, mailing addresses, and phone numbers.

[…]

Volkswagen said that “the majority” of affected data included: “first and last name, personal or business mailing address, email address, or phone number. In some instances, the data also included information about a vehicle purchased, leased, or inquired about, such as the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), make, model, year, color and trim packages.” But for 90,000 victims, the data also included “more sensitive information relating to eligibility for a purchase, loan, or lease.

Nearly all of the more sensitive data (over 95%) consists of driver’s license numbers,” according to the company, which added that the majority of data pertains to Audi customers and interested buyers in the US and Canada only. The company also said it believes the data was left unsecured by a vendor. (Audi is owned by the Volkswagen Group.)

“There were also a very small number of dates of birth, Social Security or social insurance numbers, account or loan numbers, and tax identification numbers,” the website read.

[…]

The hacker said she is asking between $4,000 and $5,000 for the whole database. 

[…]

The company added that it believes “the data was obtained when the vendor left electronic data unsecured at some point between August 2019 and May 2021, when the source of the incident was identified.” The company did not identify the vendor responsible for the breach, saying only that it is used by Audi, Volkswagen, and some authorized dealers.

The company added that the stolen data ranged from 2014 until 2019, and that it is notifying all victims.

[…]

Source: Hackers Are Selling Data Stolen From Audi and Volkswagen

Bombshell Report Finds Phone Network Encryption Was Deliberately Weakened

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It was a closed source backdoored system. This goes to show that weakening encryption for political reasons and trusting software that can’t be audited independently is a Bad Idea ™

A weakness in the algorithm used to encrypt cellphone data in the 1990s and 2000s allowed hackers to spy on some internet traffic, according to a new research paper.

The paper has sent shockwaves through the encryption community because of what it implies: The researchers believe that the mathematical probability of the weakness being introduced on accident is extremely low. Thus, they speculate that a weakness was intentionally put into the algorithm. After the paper was published, the group that designed the algorithm confirmed this was the case.

Researchers from several universities in Europe found that the encryption algorithm GEA-1, which was used in cellphones when the industry adopted GPRS standards in 2G networks, was intentionally designed to include a weakness that at least one cryptography expert sees as a backdoor. The researchers said they obtained two encryption algorithms, GEA-1 and GEA-2, which are proprietary and thus not public, “from a source.” They then analyzed them and realized they were vulnerable to attacks that allowed for decryption of all traffic.

When trying to reverse-engineer the algorithm, the researchers wrote that (to simplify), they tried to design a similar encryption algorithm using a random number generator often used in cryptography and never came close to creating an encryption scheme as weak as the one actually used: “In a million tries we never even got close to such a weak instance,” they wrote. “This implies that the weakness in GEA-1 is unlikely to occur by chance, indicating that the security level of 40 bits is due to export regulations.”

Researchers dubbed the attack “divide-and-conquer,” and said it was “rather straightforward.” In short, the attack allows someone who can intercept cellphone data traffic to recover the key used to encrypt the data and then decrypt all traffic. The weakness in GEA-1, the oldest algorithm developed in 1998, is that it provides only 40-bit security. That’s what allows an attacker to get the key and decrypt all traffic, according to the researchers.

“To meet political requirements, millions of users were apparently poorly protected while surfing for years.”

A spokesperson for the organization that designed the GEA-1 algorithm, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), admitted that the algorithm contained a weakness, but said it was introduced because the export regulations at the time did not allow for stronger encryption.

[…]

Raddum and his colleagues found that GEA-1’s successor, GEA-2 did not contain the same weakness. In fact, the ETSI spokesperson said that when they introduced GEA-2 the export controls had been eased. Still, the researchers were able to decrypt traffic protected by GEA-2 as well with a more technical attack, and concluded that GEA-2 “does not offer a high enough security level for today’s standards,” as they wrote in their paper. 

[…]

Source: Bombshell Report Finds Phone Network Encryption Was Deliberately Weakened

New ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Game Has Game Streamers Worried Over Integral Music In The Game, shows you how stupid copyright and DMCA is nowadays

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With streaming games and “let’s plays” becoming a dominant force of influence in the gaming world, one of the sillier trends we’ve seen is video games coming out with “stream safe” settings that strip out audio content for which there is no broadcast license. We’ve talked already about how this sort of thing is not a solution to the actual problem — the complicated licenses surrounding copyrighted works and the permission culture that birthed them — but is rather a ploy to simply ignore that problem entirely. That hasn’t stopped this from becoming a more regular thing in the gaming world, even as we’ve seen examples of “stream safe” settings fail to keep streams from getting DMCA notices.

Well, if there were a perfect example of a video game that highlights the absurdity of all of this, it may well be the forthcoming Guardians of the Galaxy title. If you’re not familiar with the GotG movies, you should know that retro music plays a major role in the films. The game promises that retro music will be just as important as in the films. And that’s what immediately set off concern for game streamers.

One group that is wary of this heavy emphasis on pop music is the livestreaming crowd, who are concerned that it could make the game near-impossible to broadcast. This is because Twitch and YouTube creators are regularly hit with what are known as Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices.

[…]

The game publisher of course secured the rights to the songs to be included in the game, but did not license the songs for rebroadcast. Because the world is an extremely stupid place, streaming a game equates to a rebroadcast of any music within it. And, also because the world is an extremely stupid place, Eidos-Montreal’s solution to this is once again to mute licensed music.

Newsweek contacted Eidos-Montréal to ask if they had made any considerations for Twitch streamers in respect to Guardians of the Galaxy’s music. Over email, a spokesperson confirmed that there will actually be an option to mute licensed tracks, if players want to be absolutely safe from potential DMCA takedowns.

And so a major thematic element for the franchise will be nixed in any live-streams of the game.

[…]

Source: New ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Game Has Game Streamers Worried Over Integral Music In The Game | Techdirt

Recent US Antitrust Push Is Weirdly Narrow, Pretends Telecom And Banking Don’t Exist

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[…]

The U.S. is dominated by anticompetitive giants in banking, telecom, insurance, health care, air travel, and countless other sectors. And generally, we’ve historically encouraged them by underfunding our regulators, steadily weakening antitrust enforcement, rubber stamping merger after terrible merger, and replacing competent Judges with bobble head dolls. All under the pretense that doing anything else would be disastrous, while clinging tightly to a consumer welfare standard that sometimes seemed incapable of addressing modern market, labor, and consumer harms.

[…]

The movement to rein in big tech and shore up antitrust enforcement certainly has valid components, based on justified anger at years of dodgy business practices. But this anger has been proven to be exploitable by folks like News Corporation and AT&T. Both companies are looking to saddle their Silicon Valley competitors in online advertising with rules that don’t apply to their own businesses, while simultaneously demolishing constraints and oversight of their own sectors (see: net neutrality, the dismantling of FCC authority, or the steady erosion of media consolidation rules protecting small businesses).

[…]

Meanwhile, many of the bills are oddly selective in what they deem to be a “dominant platform.” The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act (pdf), for example, greatly restricts what constitutes a monopolistic offender, making sure to carve out exceptions for telecom giants, Mastercard, VISA, and Walmart. The bill bans companies from owning or operating a business that “presents a clear conflict of interest,” but only if the company in question has 50 million monthly active U.S. users and a market cap of over $600 billion:

“…is owned or controlled by a person with net annual sales, or a market capitalization greater than $600,000,000,000, adjusted for inflation on the basis of the Consumer Price Index, at the time of the Commission’s or the Department of Justice’s designation under sec13 tion 4(a) or any of the two years preceding that time, or at any time in the 2 years preceding the filing of a complaint for an alleged violation of this Act.”

Again, this very specific restriction omits a lot of companies that are engaging in the same kind of anticompetitive behavior, including many that see overlap in markets dominated by technology giants (telecom). It’s also just kind of an arbitrary restriction given that what others value you at isn’t necessarily what determines whether or not you’re engaging in anticompetitive behavior. The actual, anticompetitive behavior does.

But just looking at the $600 billion valuation threshold gives a sense of just how this line-drawing happened. Under this definition (including the number of US users), it looks like the law only applies to Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google (Alphabet) and Facebook. That’s it. It seems notable that companies which are also kinda powerful and dominant, but happen to fall just somewhat beneath the threshold, include Visa, Mastercard, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Walmart, Disney… and Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.

[…]

Telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast have spent the last three or four years successfully convincing many DC policymakers that Silicon Valley giants are the only dominant giants worth worrying about. Rupert Murdoch has been playing similar reindeer games. Pretending “big tech” monopolies are the only monopolies that need immediate fixing benefits both, and exploiting legitimate public anger at big tech isn’t particularly hard right now on either side of the aisle.

[…]

Source: Recent Antitrust Push Is Weirdly Narrow, Pretends Telecom And Banking Don’t Exist | Techdirt

Meringue-like material could make aircraft as quiet as a hairdryer

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An incredibly light new material that can reduce aircraft engine noise and improve passenger comfort has been developed at the University of Bath.

The graphene oxide-polyvinyl alcohol aerogel weighs just 2.1kg per cubic metre, making it the lightest sound insulation ever manufactured. It could be used as insulation within to reduce noise by up to 16 decibels—reducing the 105-decibel roar of a jet taking off to a sound closer to that of a hair-dryer.

The aerogel’s meringue-like structure makes it extremely light, meaning it could act as an insulator within aircraft engine nacelles, with almost no increase in overall weight. The material is currently being further optimised by the research team to offer improved , offering benefits to fuel efficiency and safety.

[…]

“We managed to produce such an extremely low density by using a liquid combination of graphene oxide and a polymer, which are formed with whipped air bubbles and freeze-casted. On a very basic level, the technique can be compared with whipping to create meringues—it’s solid but contains a lot of air, so there is no weight or efficiency penalty to achieve big improvements in comfort and noise.”

[…]

Source: Meringue-like material could make aircraft as quiet as a hairdryer

In Brazil, Criminals Steal Phones to Empty Victims’ Bank Account

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São Paulo pickpockets are increasingly stealing people’s smartphones not to pawn off the device, but rather to gain access to their bank account.

That’s according to a report from Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo this week. As first spotted by 9to5 Mac, the report claims this kind of theft has been going on since the early days of the pandemic, but now specialized gangs have adopted the tactic to empty users’ bank accounts, and it’s put local authorities on high alert.

It remains unclear exactly how these criminals are bypassing security measures for the phones and banks involved. According to São Paulo police chief Roberto Monteiro, they appear to target devices that have already been unlocked by the owner.

“Usually Waze users in the car with an Android smartphone are their main focus. Although breaking an iOS system is more difficult, they have also specialized in it,” he said, 9to5 Mac reports.

Transfers are carried out overnight to avoid arousing the victims’ attention, he continued. In at least one case, criminals appear to have impersonated a victim after breaking into their email account and convinced their bank to transfer thousands of dollars to outside accounts.

While no official statistics have been released at this time, the problem is severe enough that the region’s consumer protection regulator Procon-SP has called on smartphone manufacturers and banks to improve their security measures.

“Procon has already learned about a gang of cell phone receivers whose main illegal business is not the resale of cell phones, but the defrauding of passwords for bank fraud. This is being done through an army of hackers,” said Procon-SP executive director Fernando Capez according to a Google translation.

In some cases, banks have refused to refund the stolen money to victims, arguing that their security systems didn’t fail but rather the clients were negligent by not regularly updating their passwords, Folha de S.Paulo reports. However, clients have fiercely pushed back in these cases. One victim currently involved in a legal battle with the São Paulo-based bank Bradesco said she hadn’t slacked on updating her passwords and her phone was closed when thieves took it. Another victim claimed he had enabled facial recognition and token-based authentication on his phone when it was stolen.

[…]

Source: In Brazil, Criminals Steal Phones to Empty Victims’ Bank Account

China has an inhabited space station: Shenzhou-12 delivers first crew to Tianhe module

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China has launched three astronauts into orbit to begin occupation of the country’s new space station.

The three men – Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo – are to spend three months aboard the Tianhe module some 380km (236 miles) above the Earth.

It will be China’s longest crewed space mission to date and the first in nearly five years.

The crew successfully docked with the space station just over seven hours after the launch.

The moment of contact was met with applause from mission control in China.

Their Shenzhou-12 capsule took off atop its Long March 2F rocket on Thursday.

Lift-off from the Jiuquan satellite launch centre in the Gobi desert was at 09:22 Beijing time (01:22 GMT).

The launch and subsequent mission are another demonstration of China’s growing confidence and capability in the space domain.

In the past six months, the country has returned rock and soil samples to Earth from the surface of the Moon, and landed a six-wheeled robot on Mars – both highly complex and challenging endeavours.

EXPLAINER: The significance of China's new space station

[…]

This 16.6m-long, 4.2m-wide Tianhe cylinder was launched in April.

It is the first and core component in what will eventually be a near 70-tonne orbiting outpost, comprising living quarters, science labs and even a Hubble-class telescope to view the cosmos.

[…]

It has poured significant funding into its space efforts, and in 2019 became the first country to send an un-crewed rover to the far side of the Moon.

But it’s had to go at it alone in developing a space station, in part because it has been excluded from the International Space Station project.

The US, which leads that partnership (with Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan) will not co-operate with the Asian nation in orbit.

Graphic showing key elements of China's space station

For its part, China says it is open to foreign involvement on its station. In the first instance, this means hosted scientific experiments. For example, the Shenzhou-12 crew will conduct cancer investigations that are led from Norway. And on the outside of the station, there is an Indian-developed telescopic spectrograph to study ultraviolet emissions coming from deep space, from the likes of exploded stars.

But, long term, there probably also will be visits to the station by non-Chinese nationals.

Source: China space station: Shenzhou-12 delivers first crew to Tianhe module – BBC News

‘GTA Online’ will shut down on PS3 and Xbox 360 on December 16th

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It’s almost the end of the line for those who’ve been causing havoc in Los Santos with their friends on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Rockstar Games says it will shut down the Grand Theft Auto Online servers for those consoles on December 16th, bringing an end to the multiplayer mode as well as website stat tracking via the Rockstar Games Social Club. The move doesn’t affect the single-player side of Grand Theft Auto V.

You’ll still be able to buy PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Shark Cards for GTA Online until September 15th. However, you won’t be able to get a refund or transfer your digital currency or virtual items to another platform.

PS3 and Xbox 360 GTA Online players can no longer transfer their character data or progress to another platform either. When the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Grand Theft Auto V arrived, players were initially able to port their GTA Online progress to the newer consoles. Rockstar ended support for those transfers in 2017.

The publisher says it will “continue to move forward with updates and support” for the PS4, Xbox One and PC versions of GTA Online. In November, it’ll release versions of GTA V and GTA Online optimized for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. PS5 owners will get free access to GTA Online for three months. It’s not yet clear whether PS4 and Xbox One owners will be able to transfer GTA Online data to the upcoming versions.

Rockstar will also shut down online features for other PS3 and Xbox 360 games on September 16th. Multiplayer, leaderboards and website stat tracking will no longer be available in those versions of Max Payne 3 after that date. PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of L.A. Noire will also lose website stat tracking. The single-player aspects of both games are otherwise unaffected.

Source: ‘GTA Online’ will shut down on PS3 and Xbox 360 on December 16th | Engadget

This is a real problem, also for the history of gaming. Regulators should force an open source variant of the server to be released to the public so that these games are not at the mercy of the publisher to kill as and when they please.

FB, Uni of Michigans latest AI doesn’t just detect deep fakes, it knows where they came from

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On Wednesday, Facebook and Michigan State University debuted a novel method of not just detecting deep fakes but discovering which generative model produced it by reverse engineering the image itself.

Beyond telling you if an image is a deep fake or not, many current detection systems can tell whether the image was generated in a model that the system saw during its training — known as a “close-set” classification. Problem is, if the image was created by a generative model that the detector system wasn’t trained on then the system won’t have the previous experience to be able to spot the fake.

[…]

“By generalizing image attribution to open-set recognition, we can infer more information about the generative model used to create a deepfake that goes beyond recognizing that it has not been seen before.”

What’s more, this system can compare and trace similarities across a series of deep fakes, enabling researchers to trace groups of falsified images back to a single generative source, which should help social media moderators better track coordinated misinformation campaigns.

[…]

A generative model’s hyperparameters are the variables it uses to guide its self-learning process. So if you can figure out what the various hyperparameters are, you can figure out what model used them to create that image.

[…]

Source: Facebook’s latest AI doesn’t just detect deep fakes, it knows where they came from | Engadget

Android, Apple Mobile Ecosystems Face UK Antitrust Probe Amid Competition Fears

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Google and Apple Inc. face a sweeping probe into the “duopoly” power of their mobile ecosystems, in the U.K. antitrust watchdog’s latest attack on Silicon Valley.

The increasingly tech-focused Competition and Markets Authority opened a 12-month market study into broad aspects of the iOS and Android systems, saying it feared the companies’ dominance is stifling competition. The investigation adds to the regulator’s separate investigations into both tech giants.

“Our ongoing work into big tech has already uncovered some worrying trends and we know consumers and businesses could be harmed if they go unchecked,” CMA Chief Executive Officer Andrea Coscelli said in a statement.

[…]

The CMA said it will consider whether Apple and Google use their position as the owners of the main app stores to exploit consumers and developers as well as their supply of mobile browsers.

Big Tech is the focus of a vast array of European probes looking at how the firms increasingly govern the terms of what people do online, often gaining insights into user behavior that smaller rivals can’t match.

The market study will inform the CMA’s move to boost oversight over the largest tech companies while it develops a new code of conduct for companies that have “strategic market status.” But the regulator also warned that the study could lead to more stringent interventions, noting that even operational splits of company units were a possible outcome.

The CMA is separately scrutinizing Apple’s app payment rules and Google’s planned changes to ad tracking.

Source: Android, Apple Mobile Ecosystems Face UK Antitrust Probe Amid Competition Fears – Bloomberg

Southwest Airlines cancels 500 flights after computer glitch grounds fleet – for 2nd time in 24 hours

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Southwest Airlines (LUV.N) said on Tuesday it canceled about 500 flights and delayed hundreds of others after it was forced to temporarily halt operations over a computer issue — the second time in 24 hours it had been forced to stop flights.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it had issued a temporary nationwide groundstop at the request of Southwest Airlines to resolve a computer reservation issue. The groundstop lasted about 45 minutes, and ended at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT), it said.

Southwest said its operations were returning to normal. The issue was the result of “intermittent performance issues with our network connectivity.”

Southwest delayed nearly 1,300 flights on Tuesday, or 37% of its flights, according to flight tracker FlightAware.

Southwest Airlines earlier reported a separate issue that required a groundstop Monday evening after its “third-party weather data provider experienced intermittent performance issues … preventing transmission of weather information that is required to safely operate our aircraft.”

[…]

Source: Southwest Airlines cancels 500 flights after computer glitch grounds fleet | Reuters

Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

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Most of Amazon’s properties including Amazon.com, WholeFoods.com and Zappos.com are preventing Google’s tracking system FLoC — or Federated Learning of Cohorts — from gathering valuable data reflecting the products people research in Amazon’s vast e-commerce universe, according to website code analyzed by Digiday and three technology experts who helped Digiday review the code.

Amazon declined to comment on this story.

As Google’s system gathers data about people’s web travels to inform how it categorizes them, Amazon’s under-the-radar move could not only be a significant blow to Google’s mission to guide the future of digital ad tracking after cookies die — it could give Amazon a leg up in its own efforts to sell advertising across what’s left of the open web.

[…]

Digiday watched last week as Amazon added code to its digital properties to block FLoC from tracking visitors using Google’s Chrome browser. For example, while earlier in the week WholeFoods.com and Woot.com did not include code to block FLoC, by Thursday Digiday saw that those sites did feature code telling Google’s system not to include activities of their visitors to inform cohorts or assign IDs. But Amazon’s blocking appears scattered.

[..]

Source: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC — and that could seriously weaken the system