An anonymous reader shares a report: A battle has been brewing in San Francisco over driverless cars. Hundreds of the autonomous vehicles have been roaming city streets over the past couple of years. On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, voted 3-1 to let self-driving car companies expand their programs and start charging passengers like taxis. The build-up before the Commission's vote Thursday was tense. Public comment lasted more than six hours. Much of that testimony was about how autonomous vehicles have impeded emergency operations in the city.

San Francisco's police and fire departments have urged the CPUC to oppose the expansion â" they say they've tallied 55 incidents where self-driving cars have got in the way of rescue operations in just the last six months. The incidents include running through yellow emergency tape, blocking firehouse driveways and refusing to move for first responders. "Our folks cannot be paying attention to an autonomous vehicle when we've got ladders to throw," San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson said in a public meeting on Monday providing commissioners testimony before Thursday's vote. "I am not anti-technology, I am pro-safety."

It's time for the open source Rambos to stop fighting and agree that developers care more about software's access and ease of use than the purity of its license, reads a piece on InfoWorld. From the report: The open source war is over, however much some want to continue soldiering on. Recently Meta (Facebook) released Llama 2, a powerful large language model (LLM) with more than 70 billion parameters. In the past, Meta had restricted use of its LLMs to research purposes, but with Llama 2, Meta opened it up; the only restriction is that it can't be used for commercial purposes. Only a handful of companies have the computational horsepower to deploy it at scale (Google, Amazon, and very, very few others).

This means, of course, it's not "open source" according to the Open Source Definition (OSD), despite Meta advertising it as such. This has a few open source advocates crying, Rambo style, "They drew first blood!" and "Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off!", insistent that Meta stop calling Llama 2 "open source." They're right, in a pedantic sort of way, but they also don't seem to realize just how irrelevant their concerns are. For years developers have been voting with their GitHub repositories to pick "open enough." It's not that open source doesn't matter, but rather it has never mattered in the way some hoped or believed. More than 10 years ago, the trend toward permissive licensing was so pronounced that RedMonk analyst James Governor declared, "Younger [developers] today are about POSS -- post open source software. [Screw] the license and governance, just commit to GitHub." In response, people in the comments fretted and scolded, saying past trends like this had resulted in "epic clusterf-s" or that "promiscuous sharing w/out a license leads to software-transmitted diseases."

And yet, millions of unlicensed GitHub repositories later, we haven't entered the dark ages of software licensing. Open source, or "open enough," software now finds its way into pretty much all software, however it ends up being licensed to the end user. Ideal? Perhaps not. But a fact of life? Yep. In response, GitHub and others have devised ways to entice developers to pick open source licenses to govern their projects. As I wrote back in 2014, all these moves will likely help, but the reality is that they also won't matter. They won't matter because "open source" doesn't really matter anymore. Not as some countercultural raging against the corporate software machine, anyway. All of this led me to conclude we're in the midst of the post-open source revolution, a revolution in which software matters more than ever, but its licensing matters less and less.

Extreme "glacial cooling" that occurred more than a million years ago in southern Europe is likely to have caused an "extinction of early humans" on the continent, according to new research. From a report: The previously unknown ice age pushed the European climate to "beyond what archaic humans could tolerate" and likely wiped out human life on the continent temporarily, concluded an academic paper published in the journal Science. The findings by 11 researchers from institutions including University College London and the University of Cambridge challenge the long-held idea that humans have continuously occupied Europe since first arriving in the region.

The newly discovered cooling event was "comparable to some of the most severe events of recent ice ages," said the paper's lead author Vasiliki Margari from UCL. "We suggest that these extreme conditions led to the depopulation of Europe," the researchers concluded. Glacial-interglacial cycles, or warmer and colder periods each lasting thousands of years, have occurred cyclically over the past 2.6mn years, with large ice sheets forming during the colder spells and melting during the warmer periods. According to the academic paper, a previously unknown glacial period that occurred about 1.1mn years ago led to abrupt cooling that lasted about 4,000 years. This happened as conditions began to warm and large ice sheets melted into the Atlantic Ocean, which pushed down European sea and land temperatures.

Amid the flood of big tech layoffs, entry to Y Combinator has become the most competitive it's ever been. From a report: Silicon Valley's premier business incubator has received 44,000 applications so far this year, the most ever, and the acceptance rate for its summer batch was less than 1%, the lowest in the organization's history. Garry Tan, the president and chief executive officer of Y Combinator, said he anticipates "little tech" will thrive even in a turbulent economy. Cuts at big tech companies have unshackled people to work on important, new companies, Tan said on this week's episode of The Circuit with Emily Chang. "I think a lot of large companies started treating their employee base almost as a place to park resources and almost as a competitive moat versus the other giants," he said.

"The amount of talent that was locked up in cushy jobs,â Tan said, "I'm hoping a lot of them actually come over to startups, and they realize, oh, this is what it's like to run fast again." Tan stepped into the top job at Y Combinator in January, succeeding co-founder Paul Graham and Sam Altman, who went on to help start OpenAI. Tan himself was accepted to the incubator as a founder in 2008, the same year Mark Zuckerberg attended the accelerator's regular "demo day" where Jeff Bezos announced Amazon Web Services.

YouTube knows that it has a spam problem, particularly when it comes to its two-year-old Shorts feature. In an attempt to do something about it, the streamer has announced it's deactivating links in Shorts descriptions, comments and the vertical live feed. From a report: YouTube is also taking away the ability to click on social media icons on any desktop channel banners. The new changes will start to roll out on August 31st. Though YouTube claims it won't continue its "unclickable" crusade, but it adds, "Because abuse tactics evolve quickly, we have to take preventative measures to make it harder for scammers and spammers to mislead or scam users via links."

At the same time, YouTube is adding new links on creators' channels, with a big clickable link appearing by the Subscribe button starting August 23rd. The link can bring users to anything from merchandise sites to social media accounts. The platform also recently introduced more creator tools for Shorts, like voiceovers. However, it won't be until at least the end of September that the streamer introduces "safer" ways to guide people from their Shorts back to the rest of their content.

The nation's best-known public universities have been on an unfettered spending spree. Over the past two decades, they erected new skylines comprising snazzy academic buildings and dorms. They poured money into big-time sports programs and hired layers of administrators. Then they passed the bill along to students. From a report: The University of Kentucky upgraded its campus to the tune of $805,000 a day for more than a decade. Its freshmen, who come from one of America's poorest states, paid an average $18,693 to attend in 2021-22. Pennsylvania State University spent so much money that it now has a budget crisis -- even though it's among the most expensive public universities in the U.S.

The University of Oklahoma hit students with some of the biggest tuition increases, while spending millions on projects including acquiring and renovating a 32,000-square-foot Italian monastery for its study-abroad program. The spending is inextricably tied to the nation's $1.6 trillion federal student debt crisis. Colleges have paid for their sprees in part by raising tuition prices, leaving many students with few options but to take on more debt. That means student loans served as easy financing for university projects.

It has long been clear to American families that the cost of college has gone up, even at public schools designed to be affordable for state residents. To get at the root cause, The Wall Street Journal examined financial statements since 2002 from 50 universities known as flagships, typically the oldest public school in each state, and adjusted for inflation. At the median flagship university, spending rose 38% between 2002 and 2022. Only one school in the Journal's analysis -- the University of Idaho -- spent less. The schools paid for it in part by pulling in tuition dollars. The median flagship received more than double the revenue from undergraduate and graduate tuition and fees it did 20 years prior. Even accounting for enrollment gains, that amounted to a 64% price increase for the average student, far outpacing the growth in most big household expenses.

British technology minister Michelle Donelan defended plans to require messaging apps to provide access to encrypted private messages when needed to protect children from abuse, which major platforms say would undermine the privacy of their users. From a report: Donelan told the BBC that the government was not against encryption, and the access would only be requested as a last resort, under Britain's Online Safety Bill which is expected to become law later this year. "I, like you, want my privacy because I don't want people reading my private messages. They'd be very bored but I don't want them to do it," said Donelan, minister for science, innovation and technology. "However, we do know that on some of these platforms, they are hotbeds sometimes for child abuse and sexual exploitation. And we have to be able access that information should that problem occur."

Hackers with apparent links to the Belarusian government have been targeting foreign diplomats in the country for nearly 10 years, according to security researchers. From a report: On Thursday, antivirus firm ESET published a report that details the activities of a newly discovered government hacking group that the company has dubbed MoustachedBouncer. The group has likely been hacking or at least targeting diplomats by intercepting their connections at the internet service provider (ISP) level, suggesting close collaboration with Belarus' government, according to ESET.

Since 2014, MoustachedBouncer has targeted at least four foreign embassies in Belarus: two European nations, one from South Asia, and another from Africa. "The operators were trained to find some confidential documents, but we're not sure exactly what they were looking for," ESET researcher Matthieu Faou told TechCrunch in an interview ahead of his talk at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. "They are operating only inside Belarus against foreign diplomats. So we have never seen any attack by MustachedBouncer outside of Belarus."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday to block and regulate high-tech U.S.-based investments going toward China -- a move the administration said was targeted but it also reflected an intensifying competition between the world's two biggest powers. The order covers advanced computer chips, micro electronics, quantum information technologies and artificial intelligence. Senior administration officials said that the effort stemmed from national security goals rather than economic interests, and that the categories it covered were intentionally narrow in scope. The order seeks to blunt China's ability to use U.S. investments in its technology companies to upgrade its military while also preserving broader levels of trade that are vital for both nations' economies.

The officials previewing the order said that China has exploited U.S. investments to support the development of weapons and modernize its military. The new limits were tailored not to disrupt China's economy, but they would complement the export controls on advanced computer chips from last year that led to pushback by Chinese officials. The Treasury Department, which would monitor the investments, will announce a proposed rulemaking with definitions that would conform to the presidential order and go through a public comment process. The goals of the order would be to have investors notify the U.S. government about certain types of transactions with China as well as to place prohibitions on some investments. Officials said the order is focused on areas such as private equity, venture capital and joint partnerships in which the investments could possibly give countries of concern such as China additional knowledge and military capabilities. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce responded in a statement early Thursday that it has "serious concern" about the order and "reserves the right to take measures."

"We hope the U.S. side respects the laws of the market economy and the principle of fair competition, does not artificially obstruct global economic and trade exchanges and cooperation and does not put up obstacles for the recovery and growth of the world economy."

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce also said the executive order "seriously deviates from the market economy and fair competition principles the United States has always advocated. It affects the normal business decisions of enterprises, disrupts the international economic and trade order and seriously disrupts the security of global industrial and supply chains."

Verizon's BlueJeans videoconferencing app will be shutting down just over three years after the company bought it for $400 million. 9to5Google reports: In May 2020, Verizon acquired BlueJeans, a business-focused video app that first launched in 2011. At the beginning of 2022, Google and Verizon partnered to preload the BlueJeans app on (since-discontinued) Glass Enterprise Edition 2 smart glasses sold by Verizon. More recently, BlueJeans gained a free tier this year, opening the app to many more potential customers and competing with the free consumer-ready services of Google Meet and Zoom. Suffice it to say BlueJeans didn't take off in popularity.

Today, members of Verizon's BlueJeans service were sent an email explaining that the app is being "sunset." The first phase of that shutdown process is that the free trial and the free "BlueJeans Basic" tier will no longer be available as of August 31, 2023. While not stated in the email we've received, business customers of BlueJeans will likely be given a longer period to transition off of the platform. In April 2020, CNBC reported that Verizon was going to pay around $400 million for the company.

According to Gizmodo, CNET has deleted thousands of old articles over the past few months in a bid to improve its performance in Google Search results. From the report: Archived copies of CNET's author pages show the company deleted small batches of articles prior to the second half of July, but then the pace increased. Thousands of articles disappeared in recent weeks. A CNET representative confirmed that the company was culling stories but declined to share exactly how many it has taken down. The move adds to recent controversies over CNET's editorial strategy, which has included layoffs and experiments with error-riddled articles written by AI chatbots.

"Removing content from our site is not a decision we take lightly. Our teams analyze many data points to determine whether there are pages on CNET that are not currently serving a meaningful audience. This is an industry-wide best practice for large sites like ours that are primarily driven by SEO traffic," said Taylor Canada, CNET's senior director of marketing and communications. "In an ideal world, we would leave all of our content on our site in perpetuity. Unfortunately, we are penalized by the modern internet for leaving all previously published content live on our site."

CNET shared an internal memo about the practice. Removing, redirecting, or refreshing irrelevant or unhelpful URLs "sends a signal to Google that says CNET is fresh, relevant and worthy of being placed higher than our competitors in search results," the document reads. According to the memo about the "content pruning" the company considers a number of factors before it "deprecates" an article, including SEO, the age and length of the story, traffic to the article, and how frequently Google crawls the page. The company says it weighs historical significance and other editorial factors before an article is taken down. When an article is slated for deletion, CNET says it maintains its own copy, and sends the story to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The company also says current staffers whose articles are deprecated will be alerted at least 10 days ahead of time. What does Google have to say about this? According to the company's Public Liaison for Google Search, Danny Sullivan, Google recommends against the practice. "Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn't like 'old' content? That's not a thing! Our guidance doesn't encourage this," Sullivan said in a series of tweets.

If a website has an individual page with outdated content, that page "isn't likely to rank well. Removing it might mean, if you have a massive site, that we're better able to crawl other content on the site. But it doesn't mean we go, 'Oh, now the whole site is so much better' because of what happens with an individual page." Sullivan wrote. "Just don't assume that deleting something only because it's old will improve your site's SEO magically."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Open source project Moq (pronounced "Mock") has drawn sharp criticism for quietly including a controversial dependency in its latest release. Distributed on the NuGet software registry, Moq sees over 100,000 downloads on any given day, and has been downloaded over 476 million times over the course of its lifetime. [...] Last week, one of Moq's owners, Daniel Cazzulino (kzu), who also maintains the SponsorLink project, added SponsorLink to Moq versions 4.20.0 and above. This move sent shock waves across the open source ecosystem largely for two reasons -- while Cazzulino has every right to change his project Moq, he did not notify the user base prior to bundling the dependency, and SponsorLink DLLs contain obfuscated code, making it is hard to reverse engineer, and not quite "open source."

"It seems that starting from version 4.20, SponsorLink is included," Germany-based software developer Georg Dangl reported referring to Moq's 4.20.0 release. "This is a closed-source project, provided as a DLL with obfuscated code, which seems to at least scan local data (git config?) and sends the hashed email of the current developer to a cloud service." The scanning capability is part of the .NET analyzer tool that runs during the build process, and is hard to disable, warns Dangl. "I can understand the reasoning behind it, but this is honestly pretty scary from a privacy standpoint."

SponsorLink describes itself as a means to integrate GitHub Sponsors into your libraries so that "users can be properly linked to their sponsorship to unlock features or simply get the recognition they deserve for supporting your project." GitHub user Mike (d0pare) decompiled the DLLs, and shared a rough reconstruction of the source code. The library, according to the analyst, "spawns external git process to get your email." It then calculates a SHA-256 hash of the email addresses and sends it to SponsorLink's CDN: hxxps://cdn.devlooped[.]com/sponsorlink. "Honestly Microsoft should blacklist this package working with the NuGet providers," writes Austin-based developer Travis Taylor. "The author can't be trusted. This was an incredibly stupid move that's just created a ton of work for lots of people." Following the backlash, Cazzulino updated the SponsorLink project's README with a lengthy "Privacy Considerations" section that clarifies that no actual email addresses, just their hashes, are being collected.

Amazon removed several books believed to be written using AI and listed under a real author's name. Decrypt reports: When professor Jane Friedman complained about books that she didn't write being attributed to her on Monday, ecommerce giant Amazon initially said that it would not remove them. But after she took her case to Twitter, earning the backing of the Authors Guild, Amazon relented early this morning. Friedman -- a non-fiction writer, journalist, and educator -- said Amazon had refused to remove the books even though they appeared to trade on her name and reputation as an author who has published how-to guides for other writers.

The "garbage books," which Friedman says were probably churned out using generative AI, had the titles "Your Guide to Writing a Bestseller eBook on Amazon," "Publishing Power: Navigating Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing," and "Promote to Prosper: Strategies to Skyrocket Your eBook Sales on Amazon." When Friedman acknowledged that she could not prove that she owned the trademark on her own name, she said Amazon said it would leave the book up and for sale. But that stance changed late Monday night when the books began disappearing from Amazon's website, and after the Authors Guild offered to step in on Friedman's behalf.

"We have clear content guidelines governing which books can be listed for sale and promptly investigate any book when a concern is raised," Amazon spokesperson Ashley Vanicek told Decrypt by email. "We welcome author feedback and work directly with authors to address any issues they raise and where we have made an error, we correct it." Other authors responding to Friedman's tweet said the same thing had happened to them, and in some cases, the publisher of the fraudulent books did more than just use their names. [...] On Tuesday, Friedman again took to Twitter to confirm that the fraudulent works were removed from Amazon. She remained concerned, however, that other writers like Hayes -- who do not have the large audience that she does -- would not be able to raise such a "big red flag."

Researchers are now waking up to another factor why so many places on earth are getting warmer, one that could be filed under the category of unintended consequences: disappearing clouds known as ship tracks. From a report: Regulations imposed in 2020 by the United Nations's International Maritime Organization (IMO) have cut ships' sulfur pollution by more than 80% and improved air quality worldwide. The reduction has also lessened the effect of sulfate particles in seeding and brightening the distinctive low-lying, reflective clouds that follow in the wake of ships and help cool the planet. The 2020 IMO rule "is a big natural experiment," says Duncan Watson-Parris, an atmospheric physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "We're changing the clouds."

By dramatically reducing the number of ship tracks, the planet has warmed up faster, several new studies have found. That trend is magnified in the Atlantic, where maritime traffic is particularly dense. In the shipping corridors, the increased light represents a 50% boost to the warming effect of human carbon emissions. It's as if the world suddenly lost the cooling effect from a fairly large volcanic eruption each year, says Michael Diamond, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State University. The natural experiment created by the IMO rules is providing a rare opportunity for climate scientists to study a geoengineering scheme in action -- although it is one that is working in the wrong direction. Indeed, one such strategy to slow global warming, called marine cloud brightening, would see ships inject salt particles back into the air, to make clouds more reflective. In Diamond's view, the dramatic decline in ship tracks is clear evidence that humanity could cool off the planet significantly by brightening the clouds. "It suggests pretty strongly that if you wanted to do it on purpose, you could," he says.

July has been confirmed as the hottest month on record globally after several heatwaves in parts of Europe, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). From a report: The global average temperature was 16.95C last month, surpassing the previous record set in 2019 by a substantial 0.33C. Temperatures exceeded 40C last week in several countries across Europe including Greece, France, Italy and Spain. Wildfires forced the evacuation of thousands of residents and tourists from several Greek islands including Rhodes. There were also high temperatures in South American countries, despite it being winter there.

July is estimated to have been about 1.5C warmer than the average for 1850-1900, according to C3S, and 0.72C warmer than the 1991-2020 average. Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, said: "We just witnessed global air temperatures and global ocean surface temperatures set new all-time records in July. These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events. Antarctic sea ice has also been at record lows this July, freezing less than in any other winter since satellites began observations in 1979. Further reading: Iran Declares 2-Day Public Holiday on Extreme Heat.

The U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday that more than 460 companies have expressed interested in winning government semiconductor subsidy funding in a bid to boost the country's competitiveness with China's science and technology efforts. From a report: The White House is marking the one-year anniversary on Wednesday of President Joe Biden's signing of the landmark "Chips for America" legislation providing $52.7 billion in subsidies for U.S. semiconductor production, research and workforce development. Biden said in a statement that companies have announced $166 billion in semiconductors and electronics manufacturing over the last year, adding the law will "make America once again a leader in semiconductor manufacturing and less dependent on other countries for our electronics or clean energy supply chains."

The Commerce Department began accepting applications in June for the $39-billion subsidy program for U.S. semiconductor manufacturing as well as equipment and materials for making chips but has not yet issued awards. "We're finally making the investments that are long overdue to secure our economic and national security," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters. "We need to move quickly but it's more important we get it right."

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from NBC News: A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Biden administration to enforce regulations aimed at clamping down on so-called ghost guns -- firearm-making kits available online that people can assemble at home. The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, in a brief order (PDF) put on hold a July 5 ruling by a federal judge in Texas that blocked the regulations nationwide. The vote was 5-4, with conservatives Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberal justices in the majority.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, commonly known as ATF, issued the regulations last year to tackle what it claims has been an abrupt increase in the availability of ghost guns. The guns are difficult for law enforcement to trace, with the administration calling them a major threat to public safety. The rule clarified that ghost guns fit within the definition of 'firearm' under federal law, meaning that the government has the power to regulate them in the same way it regulates firearms manufactured and sold through the traditional process. The regulations require manufacturers and sellers of the kits to obtain licenses, mark the products with serial numbers, conduct background checks and maintain records.

The White House on Tuesday held its first-ever cybersecurity "summit" on the ransomware attacks plaguing U.S. schools, in which criminal hackers have dumped online sensitive student data, including medical records, psychiatric evaluations and even sexual assault reports. PBS reports: At least 48 districts have been hit by ransomware attacks this year -- already three more than in all of 2022, according to the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft. All but 10 had data stolen, the firm reported. Typically, Russian-speaking foreign-based gangs steal the data -- sometimes including the Social Security numbers and financial data of district staff -- before activating network-encrypting malware then threaten to dump it online unless paid in cryptocurrency. "Last school year, schools in Arizona, California, Washington, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Michigan were all victims of major cyber attacks," the deputy national security advisor for cyber, Anne Neuberger, told the summit.

An October 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, found that more than 1.2 million students were affected in 2020 alone -- with lost learning ranging from three days to three weeks. Nearly one in three U.S. districts had been breached by the end of 2021, according to a survey by the Center for Internet Security, a federally funded nonprofit. "Do not underestimate the ruthlessness of those who would do us harm," said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during the summit, noting that even reports on suicide attempts have been dumped online by criminal extortionists and urging educators to avail themselves of federal resources already available.

Among measures announced at the summit: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will step up tailored security assessments for the K-12 sector while technology providers, including Amazon Web Services, Google and Cloudflare, are offering grants and other support. A pilot proposed by Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel -- yet to be voted on by the agency -- would make $200 million available over three years to strengthen cyber defense in schools and libraries.

The UK's Electoral Commission revealed that a cyber attack granted access to the data of 40 million voters. It went unnoticed for a year and was not disclosed to the public for an additional 10 months. The Guardian reports: The Electoral Commission apologized for the security breach in which the names and addresses of all voters registered between 2014 and 2022 were open to "hostile actors" as far back as August 2021. The attack was discovered last October and reported within 72 hours to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), as well as the National Crime Agency. However, the public has only now been informed that the electoral registers containing the data of millions of voters may have been accessible throughout that time.

The Electoral Commission said it was "not able to know conclusively" what information had been accessed. It is not known whether the attackers were linked to a hostile state, such as Russia, or a criminal cyber gang. The watchdog said "much of the data" was already in the public domain and insisted it would be difficult for anyone to influence the outcome of the UK's largely paper-based electoral system, but it acknowledged that voters would still be concerned.

The attackers were able to access full copies of the electoral registers, held by the commission for research purposes and to enable permissibility checks on political donations. These registers include the name and address of anyone in the UK who was registered to vote between 2014 and 2022. The commission's email system was also accessible during the attack. The full register held by the Electoral Commission contains name and address data that can be inspected by the public but only locally through electoral registration officers, with only handwritten notes allowed. The information is not permitted to be used for commercial or marketing purposes. The data of anonymous voters whose details are private for safety reasons and the addresses of overseas voters were not accessible to the intruders in the IT system. A spokesperson for the ICO, the UK's independent regulator on data protection, said: "The Electoral Commission has contacted us regarding this incident and we are currently making inquiries."

They added: "We recognize this news may cause alarm to those who are worried they may be affected and we want to reassure the public that we are investigating as a matter of urgency. In the meantime, if anyone is concerned about how their data has been handled, they should get in touch with the ICO or check our website for advice and support."

Floods, fires and heavy rains have landed more blows across Europe this week, with the authorities on the continent scrambling to respond to the extreme weather that has become increasingly common in the past few years. From a report: The most recent events have destroyed large amounts of land, left dozens of people injured, forced thousands to evacuate and, in some cases, caused deaths, and they come on the heels of scorching temperatures that have engulfed much of Southern Europe this summer. Climate change has made extreme heat a fixture of the warmer months in Europe, but experts say that the continent has failed to significantly adapt to the hotter conditions. Governments in many countries are now struggling to address the devastating effects.

"The extreme weather conditions across Europe continue to be of concern," Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, wrote on Twitter. "The EU is showing solidarity with all those in need." Heavy rains in recent days have led rivers to overflow across Slovenia in what the authorities there said was the worst natural disaster since the country's independence in 1991. At least six people have died, according to the Slovenian news agency STA, and thousands have been forced to flee their homes to escape the floods. Several countries have tried to help, with France and Germany sending equipment such as prefabricated bridges, and even Ukraine, in the middle of a war with Russia, promising to send a helicopter.