Technology

CNBC reports: Ireland’s health service shut down its computer systems on Friday after being hit with a “sophisticated” ransomware attack. The Irish Health Service Executive said there was a “significant ransomware attack” on its IT systems, without commenting further on specifics. Ireland’s vaccination program has not been affected and appointments will go ahead as planned, but the registration portal has …

The New York Times reports: The order, drafts of which have been circulating to government officials and corporate executives for weeks and summaries of which were obtained by The New York Times, is a new road map for the nation’s cyberdefense. It would create a series of digital safety standards for federal agencies and contractors that develop software for the …

Law & Crime reports: On the year former President Trump’s Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal net neutrality, the regulator was inundated with more than 22 million comments. Nearly 18 million of them were fake, and some 40 percent of those came from an influence campaign linked to the broadband industry, New York Attorney General Letitia James found in a …

Axios reports: The White House has launched a new website, AI.gov, to make artificial intelligence research more accessible across the nation, Axios has learned. Why it matters: The U.S. once led significantly in the global artificial intelligence race, but now risks being overtaken by China. This is one step the White House is taking to drum up excitement for AI …

The Verge reports: Microsoft will start fully removing Adobe Flash from Windows 10 this summer. The Windows 10 “Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player,” which permanently removes Flash as a component of the operating system, will become mandatory starting in July. Updating to Windows 10 version 21H1, expected to start rolling out this month, will also remove the software. …

The New York Times reports: Verizon Communications, signaling that it has given up on its media business, said on Monday that it agreed to sell Yahoo and AOL to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. The transaction is the latest turn in the history of two of the internet’s earliest pioneers. Yahoo used to be the …

The New York Daily News reports: The NYPD’s robot dog has been hounded out of service. The police department will return Digidog to robotics manufacturer Boston Dynamics after months of backlash and mockery that compared the four-legged bot to a dystopian sci-fi surveillance nightmare. John Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, confirmed Wednesday the NYPD had cancelled …

The Verge reports: Apple has begun rolling out iOS and iPadOS 14.5. The latest software update includes the new App Tracking Transparency feature, which lets users decide whether to allow apps to track their activity “across other companies’ apps and websites” for advertising purposes. A pop-up will now appear whenever apps are designed to share your activity in this way. …

The Verge reports: Twitter has said it’s exploring features like tipping to give people a way to pay other Twitter users, and now we have further evidence that a tip feature may be on the way. App researcher Jane Manchun Wong shared images on Thursday and Friday showing that Twitter could offer a tipping button right on user profiles. Twitter …

The Associated Press reports: Amazon is rolling out pay-by-palm technology at some Whole Foods grocery stores near its headquarters to make paying quicker and more convenient. The technology, called Amazon One, lets shoppers scan the palm of their hand and connect it to a credit card or Amazon account. After the initial set up, which Amazon says takes less than …

CNBC reports: On Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted a denial that his company’s automated driving systems were involved in a fatal crash in Spring, Texas. Two federal agencies, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, are investigating the crash now. Local police said in multiple press interviews that, apparently, nobody was behind the wheel …

The Washington Post reports: NASA successfully flew its four-pound helicopter from the surface of Mars early Monday, the first powered flight of an aircraft on another planet, a feat NASA officials compared to the Wright brothers first flight in 1903. At about 3:30 a.m., the twin, carbon-fiber rotor blades began spinning furiously, and the chopper, called Ingenuity, lifted off the …

Click2Houston reports: Two men are dead after a Tesla traveling in Spring crashed into a tree and no one was driving the vehicle, officials say. The crash happened at 11:25 p.m. in the Carlton Woods subdivision near The Woodlands. The car burst into flames after hitting a tree near 18 Hammock Dunes Place. Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman …

Reuters reports: NASA said on Friday it has awarded billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s private space company SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to build a spacecraft to fly astronauts to the moon, picking it over Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics Inc. The bid by Tesla Inc chief Musk beat one from Amazon.com Inc’s founder Jeff Bezos, who had …

Gothamist reports: The NYPD’s robot dog is once again stirring privacy concerns and cyberpunk prophesies of some New Yorkers, after the four-legged machine was spotted inside of a Manhattan public housing complex on Monday. A video shared on Twitter shows the robot trotting out of a building on East 28th Street in front of two NYPD officers, then slowly descending …

The Verge reports: Facebook is testing a video speed-dating app called Sparked. The app, which requires a Facebook profile to create an account, is developed by the company’s NPE Team, Facebook’s in-house group that works on experimental apps. You can view the Sparked webpage here, where it describes the app as “video dating with kind people.” It also promises no …

Bloomberg News reports: The company is working on a product that would combine an Apple TV set-top box with a HomePod speaker and include a camera for video conferencing through a connected TV and other smart-home functions, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The device’s other capabilities would include standard …

STAT News reports: After 13 years, Google is coming back for patient health records. The tech giant has launched an early user feedback program aimed at exploring how patients might want to see, organize, and share their own medical record data. The work could inform the creation of a consumer-facing medical records tool along the lines of Apple’s Health Records …

The Verge reports: Google says it has blocked several terms associated with hate speech from being used as ad keywords on YouTube videos. The move follows a report by The Markup, which found that advertisers could search for terms like “white lives matter” and “white power” when deciding where to place ads on YouTube. Google says it does not publicly …

The Verge reports: Spot, the quadruped robot built by US firm Boston Dynamics, has appeared alongside soldiers during military exercises carried out by the French army. The robot was apparently being used for reconnaissance during a two-day training exercise, but the deployment raises questions about how and where Boston Dynamics’ machines will be used in future. Pictures of the exercises …