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Amazon shareholders will vote on ending facial recognition sales to police
Amazon's investors have forced two shareholder votes: one proposes to prohibit sales of the controversial Rekognition facial to government agencies unless the board concludes that it doesn't violate human rights and a second requests an independent report looking into potential rights violations and their impact on company finances (The New York Times).
The vote will be non-binding, but the company nonetheless tried to block it until the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered that it must go ahead. Rekognition is only known to be in use by a handful of US police departments, but reports indicate that they're routinely ignoring Amazon's accuracy guidelines, going so far as to feed police sketches into the system alongside the photos it's designed for.
A new volcanic mountain has risen beneath the Indian Ocean
Researchers have discovered a new underwater mountain, 800 metres high and 5 kilometres wide, that emerged in the space of six months near the French island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean (Science). The volcanic eruption that created it has been triggering small earthquakes on the island for months and a magma chamber beneath the island is thought to be shrinking, causing it to sink 13cm in the last year.
Dronemaker DJI could be next on the US trade war hit-list
The US Department of Homeland Security has, according to an alert seen by CNN, warned that Chinese-made drones "contain components that can compromise your data and share your information on a server accessed beyond the company itself" (The Register). Although industry-leading dronemaker DJI isn't mentioned by name, it's been caught out by a number of security vulnerabilities and – if users opt in– can upload flight data and imagery to DJI's Chinese cloud servers.
Google stored some G Suite user passwords in plain text for over a decade
Google stored some business users' passwords in unhashed plaintext for 14 years (WIRED). The company revealed the issue, which affected passwords that could formerly be set for staff by admins, although they were at least encrypted. Google also discovered a more recent fault, dating from January, which stored unhashed passwords for up to 14 days. Reset notices have been sent to affected businesses.
Nintendo mobile games to be shut down in Belgium over loot boxes
Nintendo has announced that it will end service for its Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Fire Emblem Heroes smartphone games in Belgium from August 27 (Eurogamer). It says that this is due to "ambiguity" in Belgian law, which bans random loot boxes such as Fire Emblem Heroes' random hero summoning, which players pay for with an in-game premium currency.
Minecraft's future is augmented reality
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
