Amazon ends mask requirements regardless of vaccine status

Earlier this month, Amazon announced that vaccinated warehouse workers (but not unvaccinated ones) were no longer required to wear masks. Now, the company is making face masks optional at its operations facilities across the US regardless of vaccination status starting today, according to a notice sent to workers seen by CNBC. “[This] is an exciting step in our path to normal operations,” the letter states.

Workers will still have to mask up in states that mandate mask usage at work regardless of vaccination status, including Hawaii, Illinois, Oregon and Washington. Other states like California only require unvaccinated individuals to wear masks. 

The move comes amid a steep drop in Omicron COVID-19 infections across the US. Amazon confirmed that the notice was real, but told CNBC it still strongly recommends that unvaccinated employees continue to wear masks. 

Amazon had previously dropped mask restrictions toward the end of the COVID-19 Delta variant outbreak, but was forced to revive them in December as Omicron began to surge. Unlike Google and other tech companies, Amazon never required vaccinations for workers. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidance last week allowing around 70 percent of Americans to remove face coverings in areas where COVID-19 hospitalizations were low. However, some medical professionals are still concerned about protection for the elderly, immunocompromised and other vulnerable individuals. 



Source: Engadget – Amazon ends mask requirements regardless of vaccine status

25 Examples of the Linux find Command

The find command in Linux/Unix is known to be one of the most important and frequently used commands for searching files and directories. It supports different arguments and options for finding files and directories. Even if you can find files and directories in Linux via GUI it will be more friendly and easier to use, but the GUI may require a long time to load with larger sizes.. As a result, experienced System Administrators use only the command-line search because of its reliability, speed, and power.

The post 25 Examples of the Linux find Command appeared first on Linux Today.



Source: Linux Today – 25 Examples of the Linux find Command

UN Climate Report: 'Atlas of Human Suffering' Worse, Bigger

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Deadly with extreme weather now, climate change is about to get so much worse. It is likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an “unavoidable” increase in risks, a new United Nations science report says. And after that watch out. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said Monday if human-caused global warming isn’t limited to just another couple tenths of a degree, an Earth now struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways with some being “potentially irreversible.”

Today’s children who may still be alive in the year 2100 are going to experience four times more climate extremes than they do now even with only a few more tenths of a degree of warming over today’s heat. But if temperatures increase nearly 2 more degrees Celsius from now (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) they would feel five times the floods, storms, drought and heat waves, according to the collection of scientists at the IPCC. Already at least 3.3 billion people’s daily lives “are highly vulnerable to climate change” and 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather, the report says. Large numbers of people are being displaced by worsening weather extremes. And the world’s poor are being hit by far the hardest, it says.

More people are going to die each year from heat waves, diseases, extreme weather, air pollution and starvation because of global warming, the report says. Just how many people die depends on how much heat-trapping gas from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas gets spewed into the air and how the world adapts to an ever-hotter world, scientists say. The report lists mounting dangers to people, plants, animals, ecosystems and economies, with people at risk in the millions and billions and potential damages in the trillions of dollars. The report highlights people being displaced from homes, places becoming uninhabitable, the number of species dwindling, coral disappearing, ice shrinking and rising and increasingly oxygen-depleted and acidic oceans. Some of these risks can still be prevented or lessened with prompt action. “Today’s IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – UN Climate Report: ‘Atlas of Human Suffering’ Worse, Bigger

Twitter To Label Tweets Linking To Russian State Media

wiredmikey writes: “Twitter will put warnings on tweets sharing links to Russian state-affiliated media, the platform said Monday, as Kremlin-tied outlets are accused of spreading misinformation on Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine,” reports SecurityWeek. The news comes as Russian troops have launched a major assault on Ukraine and while their forces battle in the physical world for control over various cities and regions, a battle is also taking place in cyberspace with attacks and misinformation campaigns. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity, says the platform is seeing more than 45,000 tweets per day that are sharing links to state-affiliated media outlets.

“Our product should make it easy to understand who’s behind the content you see, and what their motivations and intentions are,” he added. In addition to adding labels that identify the sources of links, Roth said the platform is also “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Twitter To Label Tweets Linking To Russian State Media

Elden Ring Mod Lets You Pause The Game

Elden Ring: it’s good, people are saying, but it’s good with certain caveats, like the fact you can’t properly pause the game. This isn’t anything new for Souls-like titles, of course, but if Elden Ring’s hype means this is the first of them that you’re checking out (or if you’ve got older and/or your circumstances…

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Source: Kotaku – Elden Ring Mod Lets You Pause The Game

TikTok follows Facebook in blocking RT and Sputnik in the EU

TikTok has joined Facebook in blocking access to two Russian state media outlets in the European Union. Sputnik and RT are no longer able to post to audiences within the EU, and their pages and content will no longer be accessible to users in the bloc, a TikTok spokesperson confirmed.

TikTok’s move comes as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft have also cracked down on the outlets, which have large followings on social media platforms. Facebook also said Monday that it was blocking access to the publications, and Twitter said it would label all tweets from Russian state media accounts.Those actions come after a broader order from EU officials to ban RT and Sputnik.



Source: Engadget – TikTok follows Facebook in blocking RT and Sputnik in the EU

Nvidia Allegedly Hacks Hackers Who Stole Company's Data

According to Vx-underground on Twitter, Nvidia has reportedly retaliated against the hacker group that stole over 1TB of the company’s data by sneaking back into the hacker’s system and encrypting the stolen data. Tom’s Hardware reports: LAPSU$, an extortion group in South America, had illegally tapped into Nvidia’s mailing server and installed malware on the software distribution server. As a result, the hacker group purportedly extracted over 1TB of Nvidia’s data. However, it’s unknown what kind of data the hackers had stolen, whether Nvidia’s or its clients’ data. It would seem that Nvidia has identified the attackers. According to the Vx-underground’s Twitter post and backed by screenshots, the chipmaker has infected the perpetrators’ system with ransomware and encrypted the stolen data in response to the attack. The group claimed that it had a backup of the data, though.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Nvidia Allegedly Hacks Hackers Who Stole Company’s Data

A wartime plea to Western satellite companies: “We need this data, please”

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Source: Ars Technica – A wartime plea to Western satellite companies: “We need this data, please”

Smugglers Already Running Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser Merch on Ebay

It’s only been a few days since Disney’s lavishly priced Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser attraction previewed for invited media, influencers, and guests—yet eBay listings are already being promoted for exclusive items from the experience. Some item postings even have timetables for guests who have yet to step onto the

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Source: Gizmodo – Smugglers Already Running Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser Merch on Ebay

Satellite Outage Knocks Out Thousands of Enercon's Wind Turbines

Germany’s Enercon on Monday said a “massive disruption” of satellite connections in Europe was affecting the operations of 5,800 wind turbines in central Europe. MarketScreener reports: It said the satellite connections stopped working on Thursday, knocking out remote monitoring and control of the wind turbines, which have a total capacity of 11 gigawatt (GW). “The exact cause of the disruption is not yet known. The communication services failed almost simultaneously with the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Enercon said in a statement.

Enercon has informed Germany’s cybersecurity watchdog BSI and is working with the relevant providers of the satellite communication networks to resolve the disruption, which it said affected around 30,000 satellite terminals used by companies and organisations from various sectors across Europe. “However, no effects on power grid stability are currently expected due to redundant communication capabilities of the responsible grid operators. Further investigations into the cause are being carried out by the company concerned in close exchange with the responsible authorities,” BSI said. There was no risk to the turbines as they continued to operate on “auto mode,” the company said. The report also notes that Viasat was “investigating a suspected cyberattack that caused a partial outage in its residential broadband services in Ukraine and other European countries”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Satellite Outage Knocks Out Thousands of Enercon’s Wind Turbines

Uber looks to speed up sale of its stake in Russian ride-hailing app Yandex

Uber hopes to accelerate a planned sale of its remaining holdings in Yandex.Taxi, the Russian-owned ride-hailing platform, reportedThe New York Times. Uber owns a 29% stake in the service, which was roughly equivalent to $800 million at the end of 2021. While speeding up the sale is directly in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Uber has been looking to exit the Russian market for a while. Last year Uber announced it would sell its stake of Yandex’s autonomous vehicle and food delivery divisions back to the Russian internet company for a total of $1 billion. In the wake of Monday’s decision, three Uber executives resigned from the board of Yandex.Taxi.

“In light of recent events, we are actively looking for opportunities to accelerate the sale of our remaining holdings and, in the meantime, will remove our executives from the board of the joint venture,” Uber said in a statement to the Times.

The decision aligns with similar moves made by private US companies like Google, Apple, Meta, Netflix and others to cut ties with Russia in light of its invasion of Ukraine. It will also mark the end of what has been a very rocky ride for Uber in Russia, since it first launched in the country in 2014. The ride-hailing and food delivery market in Russia was already dominated by Yandex.Taxi, which is partly owned by Russia’s largest tech company, Yandex. Both companies entered in a $3.7 billion dollar deal in 2017, with Uber owning 37 percent of Yandex.Taxi. Customers in Russia can use either the Yandex or Uber app to hail a ride.

Concerns that Yandex.Taxi is illegally harvesting user data prompted Lithuania’s transport and economy minister on Monday to ask Google and Apple to remove the app from their respective app stores, citing national security concerns. Back in 2018, the head of Lithuania’s cybersecurity center noted that the Yandex.Taxi app requests access to your camera, microphone and local data network, and urged locals not to use the platform. Yandex has denied the allegations and stated that the app complies with EU data regulations.



Source: Engadget – Uber looks to speed up sale of its stake in Russian ride-hailing app Yandex

Crypto Exchanges Consider Ukraine's Call To Freeze Russians' Bitcoin

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinTelegraph: As the West continues to impose more sanctions against Russian banks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one Ukrainian official has called for sanctions on Russians’ cryptocurrency holdings as well. Mykhailo Fedorov, minister of digital transformation of Ukraine, took to Twitter on Sunday to urge the global cryptocurrency exchanges to block addresses of Russian users. He emphasized that exchanges should freeze not only the addresses tied to Russia and Belarus officially but also to “sabotage ordinary users.” Fedorov subsequently pointed out that some industry-related services have already moved to freeze assets from Russia and Belarus, including the nonfungible token platform DMarket. “Funds from these accounts could be donated to the war effort. Nowadays Robin Hoods. Bravo,” Fedorov stated. He also cited the ongoing measures taken by the social media giant Meta regarding Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Fedorov’s appeals could potentially be catastrophic for the Russian cryptocurrency market, as Russians were estimated to hold more than $200 billion in crypto as of early February.

Binance does not plan to freeze assets by Russians because this would contradict cryptocurrency’s main principles of financial freedom, a spokesperson for the firm told Cointelegraph on Monday: “We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users’ accounts. Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe.” The representative added that the exchange is taking measures to ensure that sanctions are against sanctioned entities in Russia while “minimizing the impact to innocent users.” “Should the international community widen those sanctions further, we will apply those aggressively as well,” the spokesperson added.

Some crypto executives believe that sanctions against Russia are eventually inevitable. However, they should target only select persons as the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control usually does. “We think that the sanctions will be inevitable by naming new sanctioned persons as US/OFAC has done in the past. However, banning all crypto companies from offering services to ordinary Russians would not make sense and would cause more harm for everyday people than good,” LocalBitcoins chief marketing officer Jukka Blomberg told Cointelegraph. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell also said that the Kraken exchange will not be able to freeze the accounts of the exchange’s Russian clients without a legal requirement. “Russians should be aware that such a requirement could be imminent,” he added. Powell previously recommended Kraken users move their crypto assets out of the exchanges, referring to Canada’s Emergency Act freezing the crypto of dissidents.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Crypto Exchanges Consider Ukraine’s Call To Freeze Russians’ Bitcoin

How to Install Signal 5.33.0 on Ubuntu and Other Distributions

Signal is a free, cross-platform application for communication purposes. Learn to install Signal 5.33.0 on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Manjaro, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux here.

The post How to Install Signal 5.33.0 on Ubuntu and Other Distributions appeared first on Linux Today.



Source: Linux Today – How to Install Signal 5.33.0 on Ubuntu and Other Distributions

New James Cameron Trailer Alert! (It's for His Book, But Still Very Cool)

As fans everywhere anxiously, nervously, and curiously await the trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar 2, we’ve got the next best thing. Sort of. It’s a trailer for Cameron’s new book, Tech Noir. And before you immediately write that off as lame, let us tell you what Tech Noir is: it’s a nearly 400-page hardcover…

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Source: Gizmodo – New James Cameron Trailer Alert! (It’s for His Book, But Still Very Cool)