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Unusual activity at a nuclear power reactor in China has drawn international attention, as two French companies involved in the plant acknowledged problems on Monday but said they could be handled safely. From a report: The companies were responding to a report by CNN on Monday that Framatome, one of the companies, had sought help from the United States, citing an "imminent radiological threat" at the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong Province. EDF, France's main power utility and part owner of the power plant, said in a statement that certain gases had accumulated in the water and steam surrounding the uranium fuel rods at the heart of the reactor. But it said that the reactor had procedures for dealing with such a buildup of gases, which it described as a "known phenomenon." Framatome, an EDF affiliate and the builder of the reactors, said that there had been a "performance issue" but that the plant was operating within its safety parameters. In China, the power plant said in a statement on Sunday night that no leak into the environment had been detected.

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Lengthy support for enterprises that prefer things just so

Ubuntu Pro is coming to Google Cloud, replete with an all-important 10-year maintenance commitment for corporate punters who like things stable.…

Will be transferred to a halfway house, attorney continues to fight for presidential pardon

Reality Winner, the former NSA intelligence contractor who leaked evidence of Russian interference in a US Presidential election to the press, has been released from prison.…

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave Microsoft's LinkedIn another chance to try to stop rival hiQ Labs from harvesting personal data from the professional networking platform's public profiles -- a practice that LinkedIn contends threatens the privacy of its users. From a report: The justices threw out a lower court ruling that had barred LinkedIn from denying hiQ access to the information that LinkedIn members had made publicly available. At issue is whether companies can use a federal anti-hacking law called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which prohibits accessing a computer without authorization, to block competitors from harvesting or "scraping" vast amounts of customer data from public-facing parts of a website. The justices sent the dispute back to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider in light of their June 4 ruling that limited the type of conduct that can be criminally prosecuted under the same law. In that case, the justices found that a person cannot be guilty of violating that law if they misuse information on a computer that they have permission to access.

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Injunction halts introduction of $15-a-month fee for low-income households

A new law due to come into force tomorrow that would force broadband providers in New York State to provide net access to low-income households for $15 a month has been put on hold.…

tomhath writes: Economists are predicting a massive wave of resignations in the coming months. Up to 40% of employees at some companies are considering career changes after working from home or living on unemployment supplement for a year. The reasons are varied -- burnout, unwillingness to return to the office, opportunity to change while on unemployment all factor into it.

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Fines for sending 'core' and 'important' info overseas, although what qualifies remains undefined

China's Standing Committee of the National People's Congress has passed a new data security law requiring companies to seek approval before transferring what it refers to as "core" data overseas.…

Reality Winner, a former NSA intelligence contractor who leaked a classified hacking report to the press in 2017, was released on Monday from prison for good behavior, her attorney said. From a report: Winner is not yet at large. She has been transferred from prison to a Residential Reentry Management facility in San Antonio, Texas, where she will remain until November 2021, when she will be fully released under supervised release, her lawyer said. Winner, who worked for NSA contractor Pluribus International Corporation, was initially arrested in June 2017 on charges that a month earlier, she leaked a classified NSA report to online news outlet The Intercept. In the report, the NSA detailed a hacking campaign linked to Russia's military intelligence service, the General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), which compromised the email accounts of multiple employees of election software maker VR Systems ahead of the 2016 US Presidential Election. The hack, which took place in August 2016, was used by the GRU hackers as a springboard to send spear-phishing emails with malware-laced documents to US government employees. Winner's leak, although not extensive, served as the base material for an article titled "Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election."

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Car maker to draw upon its investments in hydrogen fuel tech

Honda and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have agreed to embark on a joint feasibility study to supply oxygen, hydrogen, and electricity to humans and rovers in outer space.…

Amazon's new Luna game streaming service is offering no-invite access on Prime Day, June 21 and 22. From a report: During that time, Prime subscribers in most of the US will be able to start a 7-day Luna trial, and can now get discounts on a Luna controller and Fire TV bundle. To access Luna currently, you must request an invitation or own a supported Fire TV device. It's available on Windows and Mac PCs, Fire TV, iPhone and iPad (via the web) and on supported Android phones. It costs $5.99 a month to access games including Resident Evil 7, Control, Tacoma, Rez Infinite and Metro Exodus. Amazon is discounting the dedicated Luna controller by 30 percent from today until June 22, reducing it to $49 from the list price $70 for Prime members. On top of that, it's offering the Fire TV stick 4K and Luna Controller in the Fire TV Gaming Bundle for $74, a discount of around $45.

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Chocolate Factory presses home its advantage in web-based collaboration

Google is extending Workspace, its rebranded productivity and collaboration tools, to "anyone with a Google account", and will introduce Workspace Individual subscriptions with "premium capabilities."…

Winter through spring, the French Alps are wrapped in austere white snow. But as spring turns to summer, the stoic slopes start to blush. Parts of the snow take on bright colors: deep red, rusty orange, lemonade pink. Locals call this "sang de glacier," or "glacier blood." Visitors sometimes go with "watermelon snow." From a report: In reality, these blushes come from an embarrassment of algae. In recent years, alpine habitats all over the world have experienced an uptick in snow algae blooms -- dramatic, strangely hued aggregations of these normally invisible creatures. While snow algae blooms are poorly understood, that they are happening is probably not a good sign. Researchers have begun surveying the algae of the Alps to better grasp what species live there, how they survive and what might be pushing them over the bleeding edge. Some of their initial findings were published this week in Frontiers in Plant Science. Tiny yet powerful, the plantlike bacteria we call algae are "the basis of all ecosystems," said Adeline Stewart, an author of the study who worked on it as a doctoral student at Grenoble Alpes University in France. Thanks to their photosynthetic prowess, algae produce a large amount of the world's oxygen, and form the foundation of most food webs. But they sometimes overdo it, multiplying until they throw things out of balance. This can cause toxic red tides, scummy freshwater blooms -- or unsettling glacier blood. While it's unclear exactly what spurs the blooms, the color -- often red, but sometimes green, gray or yellow -- comes from pigments and other molecules that the snow algae use to protect themselves from ultraviolet light. These hues absorb more sunlight, causing the underlying snow to melt more quickly. This can change ecosystem dynamics and hasten the shrinking of glaciers.

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Analyst: Big 5 manufacturers should be able to shoulder ongoing semiconductor shortage

2020 was a dismal year for the smartphone industry, with sales tanking in the face of the pandemic. But things are now looking up, with Canalys expecting a 12 per cent recovery this year, albeit one not evenly shared by vendors.…

Plus: Biden sets up AI task force, and Waymo expands autonomous trucking operation with new partnership

In brief Nvidia has snapped up computer vision startup DeepMap to help build the company's self-driving platform.…

A group of seven tech companies urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to require businesses to regularly disclose climate-related matters to their shareholders. From a report: In a letter to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler on Friday, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Autodesk, eBay, Facebook, Intel and Salesforce shared their view in response to a request for public input on such disclosures. The tech industry has been vocal on climate issues in the past, even as employees have pressed the companies themselves to do better. "We believe that climate disclosures are critical to ensure that companies follow through on stated climate commitments and to track collective progress towards addressing global warming and building a prosperous, resilient zero-carbon economy," the companies wrote.

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Admits nothing but promises amendments to auto-renewal, refund policies

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has inked a deal with Norton where it will refund customers whose antivirus software subscription was automatically renewed.…

In light of the recent wave of high-profile ransomware attacks that have caused havoc in the US and Europe, the member states of the G7 group have called on Russia and other countries to crack down on ransomware gangs operating within their borders. From a report: "We call on all states to urgently identify and disrupt ransomware criminal networks operating from within their borders, and hold those networks accountable for their actions," the G7 group said in a communique published on Sunday, at the end of a three-day conference held in Cornwall, UK. "In particular, we call on Russia [â¦] to identify, disrupt, and hold to account those within its borders who conduct ransomware attacks, abuse virtual currency to launder ransoms, and other cybercrimes," the G7 group added. The joint statement was signed by the governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US -- more commonly known as the Group of Seven (G7). It comes after a series of ransomware attacks that caused disruptions at hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, fuel outages on the US East Coast following the Colonial Pipeline attack, and beef supply issues across Australia and the US following the JBS Foods ransomware incident.

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The big get Huawei: telco starts to rip and replace Chinese network maker's kit

Vodafone has revealed the first vendors included in its OpenRAN rollout as the telco starts to rip and replace its network infrastructure across Wales and the South East of England.…

Firm provides fresh water and wastewater to millions of Brits

IBM, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro are among 13 winners on a £50m deal to help build and manage applications for UK utility Southern Water.…

Wasn't it to be the 'last version of Windows'? Maybe not...

Microsoft has updated its product lifecycle documentation to state that Windows 10 Home and Pro will be retired on 14 October 2025.…