A case of New World screwworm has been confirmed in South Texas, the US Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday night. It marks the first detected breach of the US-Mexico border by the ravenous flesh-eating flies, which have been making their way up through Central America for the past several years.

In a social media post on Wednesday afternoon, the USDA revealed that a sample from Texas had been sent to the National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, for confirmatory testing of a screwworm infection. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins later posted that the testing had confirmed the infection, which was found in a three-week-old calf in Zavala County, Texas.

Chatter of a screwworm detection had already been building this week, rattling the US cattle industry.

Although many animals, including humans, can be victims of the parasite, the screwworm is especially dangerous to livestock. Female screwworms lay hundreds of eggs in the wounds and openings of warm-blooded creatures, allowing their larvae to feast on the living animals, causing deep, festering, life-threatening wounds. Although the screwworm was once endemic to the US, it was eradicated amid a yearslong control effort in the 1960s. The USDA estimates that keeping screwworms out of the US has saved the livestock industry $900 million each year.

But the fly has broken through control efforts in Central America and has been inching closer. On May 28, a case was found 25 miles from the border in a five-year-old goat in Coahuila, Mexico, according to the USDA. The case was one of many detected in recent days, including a case in a calf just 39 miles from the border, also in Coahuila.

Disputed Detections

In a media call on Tuesday, Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said, “There is no doubt that this is a very, very serious threat to our livestock.” But she also disputed claims that the fly is closer or even already in the US.

On Monday, state representative Don McLaughlin claimed on social media that a screwworm case was found just one mile from the Texas border, which Rollins and the USDA denied.

“When that false information gets out, it causes significant panic,” Rollins said Tuesday, according to the Texas Tribune. “And rightly so, especially if it’s coming from elected officials and the media.”

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that McLaughlin suspected the fly was now here. He said samples taken Tuesday from two calves on a ranch in La Pryor, Texas—which is in Zavala County, where the screwworm infection was confirmed—were being tested as possible screwworm infections. One infection was said to be in an umbilical cord wound of one of the calves. McLaughlin said he had seen images and videos of the animals and that the larvae seen in them looked like screwworm larvae.

Reuters was shown one of the photos, which it reported as showing “multiple larvae resembling the screwworm inside a bloody circular wound on an animal” but said it “could not immediately verify the photo.”

“At this point, it’s unconfirmed that it’s the New World screwworm,” McLaughlin told the outlet earlier Wednesday. “It ​looks like it, but it’s unconfirmed.”

With the finding now confirmed, the USDA said in a press release Wednesday night that it is setting up a “unified Incident Command Team” with the Texas Animal Health Commission and sending response personnel to the area. It is also setting up a 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) zone around the detected infection for quarantine, movement restrictions, and increased surveillance and fly trapping.

Screwworm Comeback

Screwworms were eradicated in the US in the 1960s amid a concerted effort to annihilate their population. This is done with aerial bombings of sterile male flies, which is the most effective weapon against the parasites. The mass release of dud studs elbows out fertile males, preventing them from mating with females, which generally mate only once.

With this method, called Sterile Insect Technique, the flies were eradicated not just from the US but from all of Central America. They were declared eradicated from Panama in 2006.

Dublin-born co-founder Robbie Falkenthal previously worked at KPMG, Flutter Entertainment and RSM Ireland.

Irish co-founded legal-tech start-up Wordsmith AI has plans to expand and hire in Ireland after a $70m Series B funding round backed by Highland Europe and Index Ventures.

The Series B – which takes the company’s total funding to $100m – will help Wordsmith expand its workforce to 300 across the US, the UK, and Europe, Middle East and Africa by the end of this year, while supporting a stronger push into its base in the US, the company said.

The New York-headquartered company employs 130 people with offices also in London, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Edinburgh.

Wordsmith intends to open an Irish office this year to meet demand in the domestic market, it said, with hopes to build out a “multidisciplinary team of sales professionals and lawyers” in the country.

The company is yet to decide on an EU headquarters, but said that Ireland is a strong contender for the role.

Wordsmith was co-founded in 2023 by Dublin-born chief operating officer Robbie Falkenthal, who spent six years at KPMG in Dublin before occupying senior roles at Flutter Entertainment, RSM Ireland and TravelPerk.

“Ireland is where I’m from, and as a country with so many major companies basing their European headquarters here, it’s a place where we see great potential,” said Falkenthal, a Wexford native.

“We are going to be expanding in Ireland this year and building out a presence which will support our growing Irish customer base.”

Alongside Falkenthal as co-founders are CEO Ross McNairn, a former lawyer who helped scale Perk and held senior roles at Skyscanner, and chief technical officer Volodymyr Giginiak, who held senior engineering roles at Facebook and Instagram.

“Wordsmith is the front door that does the work,” said McNairn. “Requests come in, the routine gets handled, lawyers approve what needs judgement, and every step is recorded as it happens.”

Wordsmith is used by more than 500 in-house legal teams worldwide, the company said, with clients including the Financial Times, Revolut, BT and Irish fintech Wayflyer. Its AI platform cuts cost by helping businesses reduce reliance on outside legal counsel, according to the company.

The platform receives and routes requests and aims to handle routine work, thereby leaving matters to legal experts only when “real risk or judgement” is associated with an action.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Yamaha has announced the launch of the NX-70A active speaker, its first foray into the wireless speaker market for over a decade.

Yamaha has envisioned the NX-70A as a speaker that would bring an “immersive sound experience” into everyday space, freeing listeners from the “constraints and limitations” of more traditional hi-fi equipment.

The ‘active’ element of the speaker’s make-up means it carries amplification inside the speaker, minimising the need for multiple boxes and reducing the footprint of the system. There’s no cable between the speakers which allows the speakers to be placed where you want in a room.

The speaker units feature what Yamaha refers to as Harmonious Diaphragm, which is comprised of a blend of ZYLON that’s used in Yamaha’s flagship speakers and spruce wood (used in grand piano soundboards). The combination is said to ensure a “consistent tone” from lows to highs, reproducing instruments and vocals both naturally and with musicality.

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Also tucked in the NX-70A’s innards is the newly developed Synergistic Drive technology, a unified circuit design that Yamaha says allows the amplifier and speaker unit “to operate in perfect unity”. It works by connecting the speaker unit directly to the amplifier circuit, precisely managing the flow of electric current and minimising distortion that could alter the sound.

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The YPAO (Yamaha Parametric room Acoustic Optimizer) adjusts playback for the room environment, with YPAO using a microphone to correct the “sonic characteristics for the particular space”, to produce a natural, balanced sound.

Wireless connectivity includes Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Google Cast and AirPlay 2. There’s support for Roon that allows users to integrate their music files from a PC or NAS into a single library; while the MusicCast Controller app that allows users to select their source, multiroom audio, view album art, create custom playlists and, of course, select the songs you want to hear.

The NX-70A doesn’t negate physical connections with HDMI eARC/ARC and CEC to connect to a TV.

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Available in black and white, the Yamaha NX-70A has a price of £2587 and goes on sale from July in the UK. The speakers will be demonstrated at High End Vienna this week.

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Valve is still determined to release its living room PC game console, called the Steam Machine, despite skyrocketing prices for gaming hardware across the board, including the company’s own Steam Deck. June was considered one of the most likely times for Valve to release its home console, but while there is no specific release date yet, Valve did offer an update on when it will launch the Steam Machine. 

The Steam Machine is set to release sometime this summer, according to a blog post by Valve on Thursday. It will come out alongside the Steam Frame, Valve’s VR headset, which was revealed along with the Steam Machine and new Steam Controller last November. 

The Steam Machine is Valve’s gaming PC, built into a roughly 6-inch cube that’s designed to connect to a living room TV. The aim is to deliver a simplified PC gaming experience for a broad audience and for game developers to optimize for a single spec as they’ve done with the Steam Deck. While the Steam Machine’s hardware is expected to be slightly more powerful than the standard PS5 or Xbox Series X, the company doesn’t see the Steam Machine as a direct competitor to those consoles. Pricing has yet to be confirmed, but with the ongoing shortage of PC memory, the price will not be easy on gamers’ wallets. 

Here’s everything we know about the Steam Machine.

When does the Steam Machine come out? 

Valve said Thursday that the Steam Machine will have a summer release date. When the hardware was first revealed, the company said it would be coming in early 2026. On Feb. 4, Valve confirmed the PC would be delayed in its first major update about the Steam Machine since it was unveiled.

This year is turning out to be quite a tumultuous time for gaming. It’s been almost six years since the release of the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, which is usually the time when those companies would begin teasing their new hardware. However, due to the memory shortage, those companies have instead been forced to increase the prices of their respective consoles and will likely hold off big news about their next-generation hardware until memory prices come down. Game developers are also petrified of releasing anything in November or else get caught up in the whirlwind of hype that is Grand Theft Auto 6, set to release on Nov. 19. If there’s an ideal time for Valve to release its new console, it will be mid-August as a buffer from September, which is getting flooded with game releases. 

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Can I preorder the Steam Machine?

There are no preorders available for the Steam Machine yet. When preorders become available, they will likely be available on the Steam Machine hardware page. 

If Valve does do preorders, the company may have a system in place to roll out consoles in a timely manner, as it did with the Steam Deck. With the Steam Deck, you could preorder the device, and based on when an order was submitted, you would get a designated timeframe for its release and when you’d receive it. 

Valve also required anyone who wanted to preorder the Steam Deck to have a Steam account. This would prevent scalpers from ordering numerous devices at once, which will likely be the case with the Steam Machine. 

Watch this: Valve’s Steam Controller Gets Some Major Design Changes

08:07

How much will the Steam Machine cost? 

This is arguably the biggest question about the Steam Machine, and for good reason. Valve said the console would be priced in the same range as a gaming PC with the same kind of power. There has been speculation that this would put the price at around $600 to $800. 

However, the global RAM shortage continues to raise the price of memory. This could mean the Steam Machine may cost $1,000 or more, which would be a hard sell for many and make it less competitive against the PlayStation 5 or a regular gaming PC. 

Valve said on Feb. 4 that it’s still trying to figure out the price of the Steam Machine.

“The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame),” the company said.

What are the Steam Machine specs? 

Valve has released the specs for the Steam Machine, but on the hardware page, there is a note at the bottom stating, “some specifications subject to change ahead of availability.” It’s not common to see that kind of disclaimer, which hints that if tariffs or  RAM shortages make the console too expensive, Valve may make adjustments to keep the price attractive. 

What else is unique to the Steam Machine? 

Valve is doing a bit more than just making a tiny gaming PC. The company is offering some features that aren’t found on the PS5, Switch 2 or Xbox Series consoles. 

To start, there are removable face plates for the Steam Machine. This is similar to the faceplates for the Xbox 360, which offer a bit of customization for the console. 

Steam Machines are upgradable. You can increase storage by adding a microSD card to the console’s microSD card slot or by replacing the solid-state drive. There is also the possibility to upgrade the RAM, but that will take a few more steps versus the storage swapping. 

The Steam Machine will also be just a computer when needed. Connect it to a monitor with a mouse and keyboard, and the console will act just like a Linux desktop. There’s also the option to install Windows in lieu of SteamOS, which would make it still play PC games, although the experience won’t be as smooth as SteamOS.

The Steam Controller for the Steam Machine will connect seamlessly to the console. And, for multiplayer games, four controllers can connect with a console very easily.

Wait, didn’t Valve already have Steam Machines?

Kind of. Back in 2013, Valve revealed a new operating system called SteamOS. It’s what powers the Steam Deck and creates the Big Picture Mode, which allows gamers to play their PC games in a mostly console-like experience instead of the typical desktop experience of using a mouse to double-click a game to start. 

Along with the operating system, Valve also released its Steam Machine platform. This allowed computer hardware makers to develop computers shaped more like a home console instead of a desktop. Alienware and Dell were some of the notable companies that developed their own Steam Machines, but none of them really caught on, partly due to many games not being compatible with the Linux-based SteamOS. 

The Steam Machines fizzled out in the mid-2010s as making games compatible with SteamOS was not a priority for game developers at the time. It wasn’t until 2018 that Valve developed Proton, a compatibility layer for SteamOS to make it easier to run most Windows games. Proton currently supports more than 20,000 Windows games. 

Valve also ended up offering an alternative to getting a whole new piece of hardware. In 2015, the company released Steam Link, a device that allowed PC games to be streamed directly to a TV. 

The Windows version of the Hola Browser has been compromised in a supply chain attack that delivered an undeclared executable identified by researchers as a cryptocurrency miner.

The compromise was uncovered during periodic certification checks on Hola Browser as part of its AppEsteem certification testing procedure, which it had previously passed.

Hola is an Israeli company best known for Hola VPN, a service that allows users to route internet traffic through other users’ devices or through paid proxy infrastructure to bypass geographic restrictions and access content from different countries.

Hola Browser is based on Chromium and integrates VPN and proxy functionality directly into the browser.

The company and its products have attracted controversy in the past due to opaque traffic-handling practices related to the operation of a commercial service called Luminati Networks, which turned free users into proxies.

In the latest app integrity checks, Sophos and other cybersecurity companies involved in the evaluation process discovered an undeclared executable named ‘me.exe’ being installed in some cases under C:\Program Files\Hola\.

The file had not been certified, had no timestamp, wasn’t digitally signed, contained obfuscated code, and could write to memory.

On closer examination, Sophos found signs that the binary was a Monero cryptocurrency miner, including strings pointing to its true nature.

The miner adds a Windows Defender exclusion rule, copies itself to Program Files as ‘HolaMonitorService.exe,’ creates an auto-starting Windows service named ‘hola_monitor_svc,’ and runs when the computer is idle.

Holas’s response

Hola was informed of the findings by AppEsteem and confirmed that they had suffered a supply chain compromise, which was also independently detected by cybersecurity firm Sygnia.

Despite that, the software vendor says that only about 0.1% of its users were affected, and there’s no evidence of user data access, theft, or compromise.

“We have since completely rebuilt our distribution pipeline, implemented advanced code-signing verification, and introduced tighter access controls and continuous monitoring across our infrastructure,” assured Hola’s CEO, Avi Raz Cohen.

“These measures are designed to ensure that only declared, certified, and signed components are ever delivered to our users.”

BleepingComputer has contacted Hola to request more information about how the breach occurred, who the perpetrators are, and whether clients on other platforms were also affected, but we have not heard back as of this publishing.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

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Have you ever had the desire to see Sam Altman and Palmer Luckey square off over a moderately suspenseful card game? If so, you are in luck.

Silicon Valley’s leaders are rushing to embrace the power of media for the purposes of marketing and political capital. Now, in a sign of the times, Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, has launched its own game show.

“MAFIA the GAME,” will apparently be an ongoing thing, where prominent tech luminaries get together and face off over a game of cards (the show is named after the party-game favorite).

The spectacle is moderated by Pirate Wires editor Mike Solana (who is also the chief marketing officer at Founders Fund). The debut episode includes a who’s who of players — Sam Altman; Palmer Luckey; Bryan Johnson, the famed biohacker who will (according to him) live forever; and Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of encrypted chat app Signal.

“I’m so f*cking bored with VC content,” Solana told Newcomer, which originally reported the show’s existence. “There has to be a more interesting way to get to know someone, and I think that this is a way more interesting way to get to know someone.”

TechCrunch reached out to Founders Fund for more information on the program.

In many ways, having a reality-TV-esque platform is just good business these days. The internet has turned the world into a population of chronic media consumers, and the average American spends around 2.5 hours on social media per day. Much of that time is spent scrolling through an endless flood of advertising-laced memes and videos.

In the modern era, the road to power and influence is paved with infotainment.

Companies and executives have sought to take advantage of this new reality in different ways. OpenAI recently raised some eyebrows when it procured TBPN, the buzzy founder-led podcast. Meanwhile, a number of tech’s most prominent players have leveraged virality to their advantage. Johnson, for instance, has managed to grow his following through a very active (and quite bizarre) social media presence. Elon Musk, meanwhile, has also managed to leverage his public persona to go viral (although arguments could be made that his online presence has sometimes hurt rather than helped his businesses).

This trend has also spread to the startup space, where people like Cluely CEO Chungin “Roy” Lee have demonstrated the power of being a one-man viral hype machine.

from the low-tech-beats-hi-tech dept

Flock Safety doesn’t seem to care about anyone. Not its customers, not those captured by its cameras, not even the legislators trying to find a balance between safety and privacy.

Flock started out by pitching its cameras — with built-in license plate readers — to the kind of people with money to blow on unproven tech and the willingness to use it to keep unwanted people (read: not white) out of their neighborhoods. It soon expanded past the gated community market, courting cops who wanted to use the tech to track unwanted people (read: not white) who might be driving around in cars and existing.

As always, both parties (Flock/cops) claimed the tech was essential to capturing the “worst of the worst” — auto thieves, wanted felons, sex offenders, etc. And, as always, real-world use cases were more along the lines of oh, you know, tracking down women seeking abortion options or letting cops keep tabs on their ex-wives.

The problem with Flock isn’t necessarily unique to Flock. It’s a problem almost every third-party contractor creates. When thing go poorly (and they have gone very poorly for Flock recently), no one seems to know who’s responsible for removing the unwanted tech, much less who actually has the authority to shut a surveillance system down.

This has created a problem that has no immediate solution. When Dayton, Ohio shut down its Flock cameras, it had no idea whether contract termination meant the cameras were actually shut off. Worse, law enforcement officials didn’t seem to know either. A fix was needed, and Dayton found a cost-effective way of keeping Flock from operating the unwanted cameras until when (or if!) it decided to roll into town to remove them.

Jason Koebler has the details for 404 Media:

The city of Dayton, Ohio has covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags in part because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city also doesn’t seem to know whether it is allowed to take the cameras down. The move comes after months of resident outrage, a scandal in which the city was sharing Flock camera data for immigration enforcement apparently on accident, and a $30,000 audit into how the cameras are being used.

You can see the problem. While the city may have terminated the contract and the PD stating it won’t use the cameras, there’s no real “OFF” switch on the end user side. Because the cameras aren’t truly owned by the city, it has to wait around for Flock to come get its boys. And even though the Dayton PD’s access portal may be dead because it’s parted ways with Flock, that doesn’t mean hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the US don’t have access to the cameras the city has determined can’t be used.

This isn’t speculation. This is something that has already been observed by other municipalities.

Cities are not sure what their contracts state how to extricate themselves from those contracts, or whether the cameras are recording (and where that data is going). This uncertainty highlights the problems associated with using private, third-party surveillance infrastructure. Last week, for example, the mayor of Menominee, Wisconsin said that Flock cameras in the city “have been activated without city council approval.”  

That’s some shady shit right there. But it’s not even the shadiest thing Flock has done in terms of (1) supposedly deactivated cameras and (2) garbage bag-covered cameras. Late last year, the city of Evanston, Illinois covered Flock cameras in garbage bags until Flock came to remove them. Then this happened:

The city previously ordered Flock to shut down 19 cameras (18 stationary and one flex camera that can be attached to a squad car) provided by the company and put its contract with Flock on a 30-day termination notice on Aug. 26. The company took down 15 of the 18 stationary cameras by Sept. 8, only to reinstall all of them by Tuesday. This was apparently without authorization from city officials, who sent Flock a cease-and-desist order to take them back down.

What the actual fuck? And yeah, one might be inclined to chalk this up to a simple misunderstanding, but only if one isn’t familiar with Flock’s general disregard for municipal laws:

Company communications with state transportation agencies obtained via public records requests, and interviews with more than half a dozen former employees, suggest that in its rush to install surveillance cameras in the absence of clear regulatory frameworks, Flock repeatedly broke the law in at least five states.

One state in particular seemed to be hit particularly hard by Flock’s lawless expansion efforts:

In South Carolina, State Transportation Secretary Christy Hall told Forbes that since spring 2022, her staff has found more than 200 unpermitted Flock cameras during routine monitoring of public roads.

Hence the garbage bags. It appears Flock is willing to activate cameras it’s been instructed to deactivate. And that’s when it’s not installing cameras illegally or thumbing its nose at removal orders by reinstalling cameras it has just removed.

Private companies who pull this sort of shit would be shut down, if not banned, by cities if it involved anything other than cop tech. Somehow, Flock manages to ride this out by claiming to be a cop’s best friend, even as its pretending local laws and regulations don’t apply to it.

I would encourage cities looking to rid themselves of Flock cameras to go one step further: just pry them off the poles and toss them in the nearest dumpster. If Flock wants to retrieve its equipment, it can be directed to the nearest landfill. Or, if cities don’t feel comfortable doing this themselves, they can always host a few foreign exchange students to help ensure Flock cameras remain inoperable until removal.

Filed Under: alpr, law enforcement, mass surveillance, privacy, surveillance, surveillance abuse, tracking

Companies: flock, flock safety