An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Something fishy is happening in the Netherlands and viewers worldwide are hooked. No, this isn't the latest voyeuristic reality series from the creators of Big Brother and The Traitors. It's a charmingly innocent live stream which lets you ring a doorbell on behalf of some frisky fish. For the past three migration seasons, an online feed has broadcast live footage from an underwater camera at a lock to the west of Utrecht. Every spring, thousands of fish swish through the Netherlands' fourth-largest city, seeking shallow waters in which to lay their eggs. Some swim all the way to Germany, like piscine Adam Peatys. Slight snag: they often have to wait at the Weerdsluis lock, which seldom opens at this time of year.

Local ecologists came up with an ingenious solution: the world's first fish doorbell or visdeurbel in Dutch (try saying it out loud). If webcam watchers spot fish waiting to pass, they simply press a virtual doorbell and the lock keeper -- who can't see down into the water, which is 2.1 metres (7ft) deep, from dry land -- is sent a notification. When enough fish have gathered, the operator opens the 200-year-old sluice gate by hand to let them through. It enables professionals and the public to work together around the clock, ensuring fish don't have to wait too long. Like a marine midwife or damp doula, you can help them reach their spawning sites unscathed. It means they're less likely to fall victim to predators such as herons, cormorants and grebes (boo! baddies!).

The project is a collaboration between water authorities and the municipality of Utrecht as fish are a vital part of the ecosystem, eating insects and maintaining the cleanliness of canals. It also provides data about the plentiful wildlife beneath the serene surface of the city's waterways. No wonder visitors are logging on to lend a hand, waving through 2,000 fish a week. Politely holding a door open for our scaly pals -- who lack the opposable fins to do it themselves -- is a feelgood act of kindness. The green-tinged live feed is like a calming version of that giant puddle in Newcastle or an eco equivalent of Big Jet TV. It's wholesome, interactive and addictive, akin to a soggy Springwatch or a low-budget Blue Planet. "In spring 2021, the doorbell was rung more than 100,000 times by punters as far afield as Canada and Taiwan," notes the report. "Thanks to its growing fanbase, this has been its best year yet, hitting one million unique users and 8.2 million visits in total."

Meta is planning to allow users in the EU to directly download apps through Facebook ads, aiming to compete with Google and Apple's app stores. The Verge's Alex Heath writes: The new type of ad is set to start as a pilot with a handful of Android app developers as soon as later this year, I've learned. Meta sees an opening to try this thanks to new regulation in the EU called the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that is expected to go into effect next spring. It deems Apple and Google as "gatekeepers" and requires that they open up their mobile platforms to alternative methods of downloading apps. Android technically allows sideloading already, though Google makes it difficult by coupling its in-app billing and licensing with the Play Store, along with the scary warnings it shows when someone tries to download an Android app from another source. Even still, Meta clearly thinks it's safer to try its test first on Android rather than Apple's iOS.

Meta's pitch to developers participating in the pilot is that, by hosting their Android apps and letting Facebook users download them directly without being kicked out to the Play Store, they'll see higher conversion rates for their app install ads. At least initially, Meta doesn't plan to take a cut of in-app revenue from participating apps, so developers in the pilot could still use whatever billing systems they want.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Brave browser will take action against websites that snoop on visitors by scanning their open Internet ports or accessing other network resources that can expose personal information. Starting in version 1.54, Brave will automatically block website port scanning, a practice that a surprisingly large number of sites were found engaging in a few years ago. According to this list compiled in 2021 by a researcher who goes by the handle G666g1e, 744 websites scanned visitors' ports, most or all without providing notice or seeking permission in advance. eBay, Chick-fil-A, Best Buy, Kroger, and Macy's were among the offending websites.

Some sites use similar tactics in an attempt to fingerprint visitors so they can be re-identified each time they return, even if they delete browser cookies. By running scripts that access local resources on the visiting devices, the sites can detect unique patterns in a visiting browser. Sometimes there are benign reasons a site will access local resources, such as detecting insecurities or allowing developers to test their websites. Often, however, there are more abusive or malicious motives involved.

The new version of Brave will curb the practice. By default, no website will be able to access local resources. More advanced users who want a particular site to have such access can add it to an allow list. The interface will look something like the screenshot displayed [here]. Brave will continue to use filter list rules to block scripts and sites known to abuse localhost resources. Additionally, the browser will include an allow list that gives the green light to sites known to access localhost resources for user-benefiting reasons. "Brave has chosen to implement the localhost permission in this multistep way for several reasons," developers of the browser wrote. "Most importantly, we expect that abuse of localhost resources is far more common than user-benefiting cases, and we want to avoid presenting users with permission dialogs for requests we expect will only cause harm."

"As far as we can tell, Brave is the only browser that will block requests to localhost resources from both secure and insecure public sites, while still maintaining a compatibility path for sites that users trust (in the form of the discussed localhost permission)" the Brave post said.

Google is pulling the plug on its "Project Iris" augmented-reality glasses, according to Insider. The Verge reports: According to the publication, Google is now focused on software instead of hardware. It's building a "micro XR" platform it could license to other headset manufacturers, much like how Google provides Android to a broad ecosystem of phones. However, Insider suggests the ski goggle-like headset we originally mentioned may actually still be in the cards -- as Google is no longer creating them all by itself. In February, Google, Samsung, and Qualcomm made an incredibly vague announcement about how the three companies were partnering together on a new mixed reality platform, and while we've heard nothing meaningful about it since, Insider's sources say that Google's goggles "were actually the foundations" of the upcoming Samsung headset.

Insider reports that that Project Iris was plagued by layoffs and shifting strategies during development, and Google's head of VR/AR Clay Bavor notably left the company four months ago. Kurt Akeley, a distinguished engineer who we reported was attached to the project, is now listed as "retired" on his LinkedIn page. Two others are still listed as being involved with AR, including Mark Lucovsky, the company's senior director of operating systems for AR.

Google said Thursday it will remove Canadian news content from its search, news and discover products after a new law meant to compensate media outlets comes into force. CBC.ca reports: "We're disappointed it has come to this. We don't take this decision or its impacts lightly and believe it's important to be transparent with Canadian publishers and our users as early as possible," said Kent Walker, the president of global affairs at Google and Alphabet. "The unprecedented decision to put a price on links (a so-called 'link tax') creates uncertainty for our products and exposes us to uncapped financial liability simply for facilitating Canadians' access to news from Canadian publishers."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government was confident Google would come around on the legislation. "I will say the conversations with Google are ongoing. It is important that we find a way to ensure that Canadians can continue to access content in all sorts of ways but also that we protect rigorous independent journalism that has a foundational role in our democracies," he said. "We know that democracies only work with a strong independent diverse media and we will continue to work for that."

The bill has been pitched as a way to keep news outlets solvent after advertising moved en masse to digital platforms, virtually wiping out a major revenue stream for journalism. [...] In an attempt to reverse the revenue decline, the government's new regulatory regime will require companies like Google and the Meta-owned Facebook -- and other major online platforms that reproduce or facilitate access to news content -- to either pay to post content or go through a binding arbitration process led by an arms-length regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). An outlet will be considered an eligible news business if it regularly employs two or more journalists in Canada, operates largely within Canada and produces content that is edited and designed in this country. Google and Meta have signaled they'd rather get out of the news-posting business altogether rather than deal with this process. Meta also announced last week that would be removing all news content from Facebook and Instagram for users in Canada. You can read more about the Online News Act here.

Some YouTube users with ad blockers are seeing a new three-strikes popup menu while watching videos. "The popup menu in the screenshot suggests users will be barred from YouTube viewing after watching three videos with an ad blocker enabled," reports Android Authority. From the report: "It looks like you may be using an ad blocker. Video playback will be blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled," reads an excerpt of the screenshot. The service presents users with two buttons, prompting them to either allow ads in their ad blocker or letting them buy YouTube Premium. YouTube confirmed to The Verge that it's currently running "a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last month, Microsoft announced that it would continue its put-ChatGPT-in-everything adventure with a new Windows 11 feature called Copilot. The company added generative AI to Edge and to the Bing-powered taskbar Search field months ago, but Copilot promises to be the most visible and hard-to-ignore version of Microsoft's big AI push in its most visible and hard-to-ignore product. This week's Windows Insider Preview build for Dev channel users, build 23493, will be the first to enable Copilot for public testers.

After installing the update, preview users can press Windows + C to open a Copilot column on the right side of the screen. It will use the same Microsoft account you use for the rest of the OS (it's unclear whether it will work without a Microsoft account, though, to date, the preview has required sign-up and sign-in). And like the other Bing Chat implementations, it has three different "conversation style" settings that either try to rein the chatbot in and keep its answers straightforward and factual or allow it to get "more creative" but more prone to confabulations. In addition to chatting, Copilot will also support creating AI images using OpenAI's DALL-E 2 model, the same technology used for the Bing Image Creator. Some features announced last month, including third-party plugin support, aren't included in this initial preview, and later versions will also be able to adjust a wider range of Windows settings.

Apple is set for a showdown with European Union antitrust regulators, insisting it doesn't need to make any more changes to its App Store after it was hit by formal charges over its treatment of music streaming rivals such as Spotify. From a report: The iPhone maker will argue at a hearing in Brussels on Friday that the EU wrongly accused it of illegal curbs on the likes of Spotify that prevent developers from steering users away from the App Store. Apple will say it's already addressed any possible competition concerns over the past two years with changes that create a fair balance between the interests of Apple and app developers, according to a person familiar with the US firm's thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Apple was slapped with a revised charged sheet by the EU in February, which showed the commission had narrowed its probe, but continued to focus "on the contractual restrictions that Apple imposed on app developers which prevent them from informing iPhone and iPad users of alternative music subscription options." Spotify says that Apple's anti-steering rules prohibit it and other developers "from telling consumers about any deals or promotions through their own apps."

Reddit is pressuring moderators who have set their subreddits to private to reopen their communities this week, according to messages seen by The Verge. From the report: The company has given moderators deadlines to lay out their plans for reopening but said that they can't stay closed. The timeframes given generally indicate a deadline of sometime Thursday afternoon. Reddit was vague about the exact repercussions but seemed to suggest this was the final warning stage. "This community remaining closed to its [millions of] members cannot continue" beyond a the deadline, the admin (Reddit employee) account ModCodeofConduct wrote in a note to one of the biggest Reddit communities that's still private.

jeditobe writes: ReactOS is an open-source operating system that aims to replicate Microsoft Windows, and can already run many Windows applications without modification. ReactOS published a new (infrequent) newsletter to outline recent work. It reveals that progress has slowed down recently, but the project definitely isn't dead. The newsletter also acknowledges the team hasn't put out a new version since the end of 2021, although progress continues. Due to shifting focuses to quality releases, they are no longer on a quarterly release cadence. The date of the next release is not set yet, but according to a huge list of already-implemented changes they aim for it to be a substantial update.

The last update to ReactOS was version 0.4.14, released on December 2021. While developers were previously committed to releasing updates every three months, that has since changed and updates will now be focused on quality rather than quantity. For the ReactOS team to be confident enough to release something, it needs to have less than 20 known unfixed regressions while adding new features and functions.

Behind the scenes, it looks like things are spinning well. The team specifically highlighted its progress on the x64 port of ReactOS, which went from being a non-booting mess to an operating system that boots up and mostly works. It doesn't run any x86 programs since it doesn't have WoW64, but it's going well.

The Society of Automotive Engineers, a U.S.-based standards organization known as SAE International, announced plans to support Tesla's EV "North American Charging Standard" or NACS port. "SAE's adoption will make it easier for electric vehicle charging station manufacturers and operators to implement the port while also making charging for EV owners more consistent and reliable," reports The Verge. From the report: Tesla's formerly proprietary charging port was opened up last year in a bid to become the de facto EV standard in the US. The US Joint Office of Energy and Transportation has worked with Tesla and the SAE in an effort to expedite the Tesla plug as a standard to improve the country's charging infrastructure.

SAE is also working with the ChargeX consortium, which was put together by the Biden administration so the Department of Energy's National Labs can help EV manufacturers create consistent tech across vehicles and chargers for items like universal error codes. SAE is lending its Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology to make charging more secure against cyber attacks. Also today, ChargePoint announced that customers setting up charging stations with its equipment could add Tesla's port standard to new orders of several commercial AC stations and DC fast chargers, as well as home AC charging systems later this year (via Electrek).

ChargePoint joins a handful of similar electric vehicle charging station companies that have announced support for Tesla's charging port. The standard has been gaining momentum since major legacy automakers Ford, GM, and Rivian all announced commitments to add Tesla's plug to their future vehicles. [...] Now, with SAE supporting NACS, larger EV charging company holdouts like the Volkswagen-owned Electrify America may have an easier time making the jump.

The servers used by the GMP project, an open source arithmetic library at the heart of GCC and other programs, slowed to a crawl earlier this month due to a large amount of network traffic originating from Microsoft servers. The Register reports: Torbjorn Granlund, principal author of GMP, raised the alarm in a note to the project's mailing list. "The GMP servers are under attack by several hundred IP addresses owned by Microsoft Corporation," he wrote. "We do not know if this is made with malice by Microsoft, if it is some sort of mistake, or if [it is one] of their cloud customers ... running the attack. The attack targets the GMP repo, with thousands of identical requests. The requests are cleverly chosen as to cause heavy system load. "We're firewalling off all of Microsoft's IP addresses as an emergency response."

The following day, Mike Blacker, director of threat hunting, operations, and response at Microsoft's GitHub, had identified the culprit: a GitHub Actions Workflow that clones a Mercurial repo and has been forked more than 700 of times. "Microsoft and GitHub have investigated the issue and determined that a GitHub user updated a script within the FFmpeg-Builds project that pulled content from https://gmplib.org," explained Blacker. "This build was configured to run parallel simultaneous tests on 100 different types of computers/architectures. This activity does not appear to be nefarious. [GMP] appears to have limited infrastructure that could not sustain the limited, yet simultaneous requests." [...]

As of last week, the excessive traffic was still an issue. "Our servers are fully available again, but that's the result of us adding all participating Microsoft network ranges to our firewall," the GMP project explains on its webpage. "We understand that we are far from the first project to take such measures against Github." The Register asked Granlund whether he was satisfied with Microsoft-GitHub's response, and he told us he had only heard once from Blacker. "I blocked about 40 IP ranges from accessing our web server," he explained. "A week after this started, there was still intensive traffic from the same IP addresses, perhaps 100 different Microsoft addresses all in all, belonging to about 40 ranges. The difference was that that traffic just caused minuscule load, and a log line in the firewall." "Problem solved. I cannot care less if they no longer can access gmplib.org. I find it interesting how little responsibility Github/Microsoft assume here. They seem to think that they are entitled to bash away at smaller sites."

If you're a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, you can now use a new feature on the ChatGPT app called Browsing to have ChatGPT search Bing for answers to questions. TechCrunch reports: Browsing can be enabled by heading to the New Features section of the app settings, selecting "GPT-4" in the model switcher and choosing "Browse with Bing" from the drop-down list. Browsing is available on both the iOS and Android ChatGPT apps. OpenAI says that Browsing is particularly useful for queries relating to current events and other information that "extend[s] beyond [ChatGPT's] original training data." When Browsing is disabled, ChatGPT's knowledge cuts off in 2021.

WhatsApp has announced it is retiring its Electron-based desktop app, forcing users to switch to the native app for their OS to continue using WhatsApp. Android Police reports: Back when WhatsApp was in the early stages of development, the developers created an app for desktop, based on the Electron JavaScript framework. This allowed them to share a code base between WhatsApp Web and the new, platform-agnostic desktop app that worked on both Windows and macOS. Around four weeks ago, a countdown timer showed up on the main screen of this desktop app, announcing its shutdown.

Doomsday is now here and WABetaInfo reports anyone visiting the Electron-based app just sees a screen saying "App expired." The deprecated app helpfully links to the native WhatsApp Desktop app available on the Microsoft Store or the Mac App Store. The new native app has been stable for around a year now, but is still relatively new. Some users may lament the transition period was too short, or the native app still doesn't have all the functionality for business users, like catalog management and quick replies, and they would be right.

A collection of over 2,200 new old stock computers from the 1980s, manufactured by a company called NABU and featuring a groundbreaking pre-internet network, are being liberated from a barn in Massachusetts. "In a way, this is two stories: The first, of a breakthrough network from Canada, a consumer-friendly 1983 version of the internet decades ahead of its time," writes Ernie Smith via Motherboard. "The other story, of the man who got a hold of these machines, held onto them for 33 years, and mysteriously allowed them to flood the used market one day. One day, thanks to a confluence of the right people noticing the right eBay listings, these two stories merged and created a third story -- the tale of a computer network, brought back to life." An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report: For more than two decades, the biggest retro computing story in recent memory sat like a sleeper cell in a Massachusetts barn. The barn was in danger of collapse. It could no longer protect the fleet of identical devices hiding inside. A story like this doesn't need the flash of a keynote or a high-profile marketing campaign. It really just needs someone to notice. And the reason anyone did notice was because this barn could no longer support the roughly 2,200 machines that hid on its second floor. These computers, with a weight equivalent to roughly 11 full-size vehicles, were basically new, other than the fact that they had sat unopened and unused for nearly four decades, roughly half that time inside this barn. Every box was "new old stock," essentially a manufactured time capsule, waiting to be found by somebody.

These machines, featuring the label of a forgotten brand built around an idea that was tragically too early to succeed, could have disappeared, anonymously, into the junkyard of history, as so many others like them have. Instead, they ended up on eBay, at a bargain-basement price of $59.99 each. And when the modern retro computing community turned them on, what they found was something worth bringing back to life. It took a while for anyone to notice these stylish metal-and-plastic machines from 1983. First, information spread like whispers in the community of tech forums, Discord servers, and Patreon channels where retro tech collectors hid. But then, a well-known tech YouTuber, Adrian Black, did a video about them, and these eBay machines, slapped with the logo of a company called NABU, were anonymous no more. [...]

Black was impressed. These devices, which utilized the landmark Z80 processor -- a chip common in embedded systems, arcade machines like Pac-Man, and home consoles like the Colecovision -- had an architecture very similar to the widely used MSX platform, making them a great choice for device hackers. (Well, minus the fact that they didn't have floppy drives.) Plus, they were essentially new. "It's new old stock, but it is tested," he says at the beginning of the clip. "I think the seller actually peeled the original tape off, tested it, and then taped it back up again." Essentially, this was the retro-computing version of a unicorn: An extremely obscure platform, being sold at a scale wide enough that basically anyone who wanted one could have it. And on top of all that, NABU -- an acronym standing for Natural Access to Bi-directional Utilities -- was essentially the 1983 version of AOL, except built around proprietary hardware. The flood of interest was so significant that it knocked the seller's eBay account offline for months while the company verified that the units were actually his. (They were.)

For people who love tinkering with devices, there was a lot to work with here, especially in 2023. There was a real chance that this relic of the past could live again, with its network available to anyone who took a chance on buying one of these devices. "The kind of hardware and software hacking that people are doing with those wouldn't have been possible 10 or even 5 years ago," says Sean Malseed, host of the popular YouTube channel Action Retro and one of the many people who bought a NABU from the mysterious eBay listing. "These machines were once considered basically e-waste, but instead they're seeing a very unlikely renaissance." So where did this computer come from? Why did this seller have so many? And why didn't you know about the NABU until now? [...]

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you want official updates from the Minecraft dev team, you better not look on Reddit. A post from a Reddit user bearing the name sliced_lime and a flair indicating they are the Minecraft Java Tech Lead (almost certainly Mojang's Mikael Hedberg) announced yesterday that Mojang would no longer be posting official content to Reddit, in the wake of that platform's response to protests over changes to its API. "As you have no doubt heard by now, Reddit management introduced changes recently that have led to rule and moderation changes across many subreddits," read the post, before announcing that those changes have led Mojang to "no longer feel that Reddit is an appropriate place to post official content or refer [its] players to".

The events are only obliquely referred to in the post, but it seems the move has been sparked by Reddit's crackdown on protests against recent changes to its API that would, in essence, kill off third-party apps that let users access the site. Subreddit mods have spent the last few weeks mounting various campaigns against Reddit's corporate leadership, either "going dark" by turning the subreddits they oversee into private, invite-only communities or else marking them as NSFW, meaning Reddit can't sell ads on those pages. Reddit responded by pressuring disgruntled mods, and in some cases ousting and trying to replace them.

Google violated its promised standards when placing video ads on other websites, according to new research that raises questions about the transparency of the tech giant's online-ad business. From a report: Google's YouTube runs ads on its own site and app. But the company also brokers the placement of video ads on other sites across the web through a program called Google Video Partners. Google charges a premium, promising that the ads it places will run on high-quality sites, before the page's main video content, with the audio on, and that brands will only pay for ads that aren't skipped.

Google violates those standards about 80% of the time, according to research from Adalytics, a company that helps brands analyze where their ads appear online. The firm accused the company of placing ads in small, muted, automatically-played videos off to the side of a page's main content, on sites that don't meet Google's standards for monetization, among other violations. Adalytics compiled its data by observing campaigns from more than 1,100 brands that got billions of ad impressions between 2020 and 2023. The company shared its findings with The Wall Street Journal. In a statement, Google said the report "makes many claims that are inaccurate and doesn't reflect how we keep advertisers safe."

Volve has joined Ford, General Motors, and Rivian in adopting Tesla's proprietary charging port. Car and Driver reports: Volvo says that starting in 2025 all of its electric vehicles will be equipped with a North American Charging Standard (NACS) port. This will allow them to charge at Tesla's far-reaching Supercharger network in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The charging network is currently said to consist of 12,000-plus fast-chargers and is expected to continue to keep growing. "One major inhibitor to more people making the shift to electric driving, a key step in making transportation more sustainable, is access to easy and convenient charging infrastructure," Volvo CEO Jim Rowan said in a press release.

What does this mean for the owners of Volvo models built before the NACS adoption? The company says its current lineup of EVs, which includes the XC40 Recharge, the C40 Recharge, the recently revealed EX30, and the new three-row EX90 SUV that are are currently equipped with CCS-type charge ports, will be able to use an adapter to connect to Tesla's chargers. Volvo says the CCS-to-NACS adapter will be made available in the first half of next year, but what remains to be seen is how much it will cost, if anything. Also worth noting is that the automaker plans to offer a NACS-to-CCS adapter for future 2025 models for owners who wish to replenish their battery using that style charger.

Damus, a decentralized social networking app backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, will be removed from the App Store due to Apple's strict payment rules. From a report: Apple had threatened to remove Damus earlier this month over the app's tips feature, claiming that it could be used by content creators to sell digital content on the platform. The tech giant has a long history of prohibiting developers from selling additional in-app content unless the transactions go through Apple, which takes a 30% cut. To avoid a ban, the team behind Damus had to tweak the app's tipping feature, which is made possible by way of Bitcoin's Lightning Network. The company previously explained in a tweet that it had to remove the tips button from posts and was only allowed to permit tips on profiles.

Apple has criticised powers in the UK's Online Safety Bill that could be used to force encrypted messaging tools like iMessage, WhatsApp and Signal to scan messages for child abuse material. From a report: Its intervention comes as 80 organisations and tech experts have written to Technology Minister Chloe Smith urging a rethink on the powers. Apple told the BBC the bill should be amended to protect encryption. End-to-end encryption (E2EE) stops anyone but the sender and recipient reading the message. Police, the government and some high-profile child protection charities maintain the tech -- used in apps such as WhatsApp and Apple's iMessage -- prevents law enforcement and the firms themselves from identifying the sharing of child sexual abuse material.

But in a statement Apple said: "End-to-end encryption is a critical capability that protects the privacy of journalists, human rights activists, and diplomats. "It also helps everyday citizens defend themselves from surveillance, identity theft, fraud, and data breaches. The Online Safety Bill poses a serious threat to this protection, and could put UK citizens at greater risk. "Apple urges the government to amend the bill to protect strong end-to-end encryption for the benefit of all."