schwit1 shares a report from Inverse: On March 23, sky observers marveled at a gorgeous display of northern and southern lights. It was a reminder that when our Sun gets active, it can spark a phenomenon called "space weather." Aurorae are among the most benign effects of this phenomenon. At the other end of the space weather spectrum are solar storms that can knock out satellites. The folks at Starlink found that out the hard way in February 2022. On January 29 that year, the Sun belched out a class M 1.1 flare and related coronal mass ejection. Material from the Sun traveled out on the solar wind and arrived at Earth a few days later. On February 3, Starlink launched a group of 49 satellites to an altitude only 130 miles above Earth's surface. They didn't last long, and now solar physicists know why.

A group of researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Catholic University of America took a closer look at the specifics of that storm. Their analysis identified a mass of plasma that impacted our planet's magnetosphere. The actual event was a halo coronal mass ejection from an active region in the northeast quadrant of the Sun. The material traveled out at around 690 kilometers per second as a shock-driving magnetic cloud. Think of it as a long ropy mass of material writhing its way through space. As it traveled, it expanded and at solar-facing satellites -- including STEREO-A, which took a direct hit from it -- made observations. Eventually, the cloud smacked into Earth's magnetosphere creating a geomagnetic storm.

The atmosphere thickened enough that it affected the newly launched Starlink stations. They started to experience atmospheric drag, which caused them to deorbit and burn up on the way down. It was an expensive lesson in space weather and provided people on Earth with a great view of what happens when satellites fall back to Earth. It was also that could have been avoided if they'd delayed their launch to account for the ongoing threat.

Ascend Elements opened a recycling plant in Covington, Georgia in late March that it says is the largest electric-vehicle battery recycling facility in North America. "It can process 30,000 metric tons of input each year, breaking down old batteries and prepping the most valuable materials inside to be processed and turned into new batteries," reports Canary Media. "That capacity equates to breaking down the battery packs from 70,000 electric vehicles annually, said Ascend CEO Mike O'Kronley." From the report: Recycling can deliver new battery materials without the expense and environmental impact of new mining. It is extremely hard to develop new mines in the U.S., but the federal government is lavishing funds on new battery recycling plants. The revamped EV tax credits also call for increasing shares of domestically sourced batteries and battery materials. Those market and policy shifts made recycling sufficiently desirable that Ascend is paying other companies for their old batteries. At the moment, those deals are mostly with EV or battery makers that have high volumes to get rid of.

"Paying for these spent batteries keeps them from going into the landfill," O'Kronley told Canary Media. "It's better to get paid for it rather than throw them away." Ascend also accepts used consumer electronics from battery-collection programs, such as Call2Recycle. That's not to say there are enough old batteries coming in to fill the factory. Currently, 80 to 90 percent of what's going into Ascend's Covington facility is scrap materials from battery factories, including SK Battery America's plant in Commerce, Georgia.

That relationship influenced Ascend's choice of location: Covington sits in the emerging "Battery Belt," a swath of new battery factories and electric-vehicle plants opening up across the Midwest and the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky (look for all the blue icons in this White House map of new industrial investments). Fellow battery-recycling startup Redwood Materials also chose South Carolina for a forthcoming $3.5 billion recycling facility. "There will need to be a recycling plant within about an hour's drive of every single one of those [new battery gigafactories]," O'Kronley said. "You don't want to be [long-distance] shipping these very large, heavy EV batteries that are classified as Class 9 hazardous materials." The report notes that the company's second commercial-scale facility in Hopkinsville, Kentucky will "introduce a brand-new technique for efficiently extracting cathode materials from black mass, which Ascend has dubbed 'hydro to cathode.'"

If you want to sneak malware onto people's Android devices via the official Google Play store, it may cost you about $20,000 to do so, Kaspersky suggests. The Register reports: This comes after the Russian infosec outfit studied nine dark-web markets between 2019 and 2023, and found a slew of code and services for sale to infect and hijack the phones and tablets of Google Play users. Before cybercriminals can share their malicious apps from Google's official store, they'll need a Play developer account, and Kaspersky says those sell for between $60 and $200 each. Once someone's bought one of these accounts, they'll be encouraged use something called a loader.

Uploading straight-up spyware to the Play store for people to download and install may attract Google's attention, and cause the app and developer account to be thrown out. A loader will attempt to avoid that: it's software a criminal can hide in their otherwise innocent legit-looking app, installed from the official store, and at some convenient point, the loader will fetch and apply an update for the app that contains malicious code that does stuff like steal data or commit fraud. That update may ask for extra permissions to access the victim's files, and may need to be pulled from an unofficial store with the victim's blessing; it depends on the set up. The app may refuse to work as normal until the loader is allowed to do its thing, convincing marks into opening up their devices to crooks. These tools are more pricey, ranging from $2,000 to $20,000, depending on the complexity and capabilities required.

Would-be crims who don't want to pay thousands for a loader can pay substantially less -- between $50 and $100 -- for a binding service, which hides a malicious APK file in a legitimate application. However, these have lower successful install rates compared to loaders, so even in the criminal underground you get what you pay for. Some other illicit services offered for sale on these forums include virtual private servers ($300), which allow attackers to redirect traffic or control infected devices, and web injectors ($25 to $80) that look out for victims' visiting selected websites on their infected devices and replacing those pages with malicious ones that steal login info or similar. Criminals can pay for obfuscation of their malware, and they may even get a better price if they buy a package deal. "One of the sellers offers obfuscation of 50 files for $440, while the cost of processing only one file by the same provider is about $30," Team Kaspersky says. Additionally, to increase the number of downloads to a malicious app, thus making it more attractive to other mobile users, attackers can buy installs for 10 cents to $1 apiece. Kaspersky's report can be found here.

The Google Assistant continues to suffer at the hands of Google's product shutdowns. The latest products to die are third-party Google Assistant smart displays. From a report: "Google no longer provides software updates for these third-party Smart Displays: Lenovo Smart Display (7", 8" & 10"), JBL Link View and LG Xboom AI ThinQ WK9 Smart Display. This could impact the quality of video calls and meetings," said Google Duo said in a support page. We're pretty sure that announcement applies to every third-party Google Smart Display that has ever launched, so the product line is dead. Google's first-party smart displays, the Google Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max, aren't going anywhere and will now be the only options on the market.

Google Smart Displays put the Google Assistant on a screen and support all the same commands that a Google Assistant speaker like the Google Home or Nest Audio would; just shout "Hey Google," and it will attempt to recognize your command. The screen adds the ability to see a visual accompaniment to your search results, usually either some text, a photo slideshow, a timer, or media or smart home controls. The system is a touchscreen and has a really basic user interface that you can swipe around in without needing to talk to it.

The Biden administration is planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032, The New York Times reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. From the report: That would represent a quantum leap for the United States -- where just 5.8 percent of vehicles sold last year were all-electric -- and would exceed President Biden's earlier ambitions to have all-electric cars account for half of those sold in the country by 2030. It would be the federal government's most aggressive climate regulation and would propel the United States to the front of the global effort to slash the greenhouse gases generated by cars, a major driver of climate change. The European Union has already enacted vehicle emissions standards that are expected to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. Canada and Britain have proposed standards similar to the European model.

At the same time, the proposed regulation would pose a significant challenge for automakers. Nearly every major car company has already invested heavily in electric vehicles, but few have committed to the levels envisioned by the Biden administration. And many have faced supply chain problems that have held up production. Even manufacturers who are enthusiastic about electric models are unsure whether consumers will buy enough of them to make up the majority of new car sales within a decade. The action from the E.P.A. is likely to hearten climate activists, who are angry over the Biden administration's recent decision to approve an enormous oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska. Some inside the administration argue that speeding up a transition to renewable energy, with most Americans driving electric vehicles, would lessen demand for oil drilled in Alaska or elsewhere.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you've ever researched anything online, you've probably used the Internet Archive (IA). The IA, founded in 1996 by librarian and engineer Brewster Kahle, describes itself as "a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more." Their annals include 37 million books, many of which are old tomes that aren't commercially available. It has classic films, plenty of podcasts and -- via its Wayback Machine -- just about every deleted webpage ever. Four corporate publishers have a big problem with this, so they've sued the Internet Archive. In Hachette v. Internet Archive, the Hachette Publishing Group, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Wiley have alleged that the IA is committing copyright infringement. Now a federal judge has ruled in the publishers' favor. The IA is appealing the decision.

[...] Not only is this concern-trolling disingenuous, but the ruling itself, grounded in copyright, is a smack against fair use. It brings us one step closer to perpetual copyright -- the idea that individuals should own their work forever. The IA argued that their project was covered by fair use, as the Emergency Library provides texts for educational and scholarly purposes. Even writers objected to the court's ruling. More than 300 writers signed a petition against the lawsuit, including Neil Gaiman, Naomi Klein and -- get this -- Chuck Wendig. Writers lost nothing from the Emergency Library and gained everything from it. For my part, I've acquired research materials from the IA that I wouldn't have found anywhere else. The archive has scads of primary sources which otherwise might require researchers to fly across the country for access. The Internet Archive is good for literacy. It's good for the public. It's good for readers, writers and anyone who's invested in literary education. It does not harm authors, whose income is no more dented by it than any library programs. Even the Emergency Library's initial opponents have conceded this. The federal court's decision is a victory for corporations and a disaster for everyone else. If this decision isn't reversed, human beings will lose more knowledge than the Library of Alexandra ever contained. If IA's appeal fails, it will be a tragedy of historical proportions.

metrix007 writes: OpenBSD, the OS that earned an exaggerated reputation for security simply by disabling services by default, has released version 7.3. Plenty of new improvements and bug fixes including to the editor, although still no real security features to help lock down a system, no virtual machine support for non-OpenBSD guests and no modern file system.

After a nice spike during the first two years of the pandemic, global PC shipments continued to drop for a fourth consecutive quarter. Analyst firm IDC's latest figure has Q1 down 29% from the same time last year. Canalys paints an even more troubling picture for the industry, with a full 33% drop. From a report: A disappointing 2022 holiday set the stage for the beginning of the year, as vendor inventory has continued to pile up -- a trend that is expected to carry at least into Q3. The plunge has been so consistent that last quarter's figures dipped below those of Q1 2019, putting worldwide shipments below their pre-pandemic level.

[...] The culprits? For starters, a lot of people purchased news systems in 2020 and 2021 as their work settings adapted to a global pandemic. Laptops tend to have a life span of around three to five years. Desktops are even longer, at three to eight. People are likely to be content with their systems for a few years at least. As vendors go, both IDC and Canalys have Apple suffering the largest drop at 40.5 and 45.5%, respectively. That's a staggering figure, likely owing -- at least in part â" to the company coming back down to earth, as the M1 chip managed to buck larger category trends in 2021/2022. That chip marked Apple's biggest PC computing update since the company shifted to Intel decades prior. In spite of what ad copy might suggest, you don't get a generational shift every year.

San Francisco autonomous vehicle company Cruise recalled and updated the software of its fleet of 300 cars, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, " after a Cruise taxi rear-ended a local bus "when the car's software got confused by the articulated vehicle, according to a federal safety report and the company."

The voluntary report notes that Cruise updated its software on March 25th. Since last month's low-speed crash, which resulted in no injuries, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said the company chose to conduct a voluntary recall, and the software update assured such a rare incident "would not recur...." As for the March bus collision, Vogt said the software fix was uploaded to Cruise's entire fleet of 300 cars within two days. He said the company's probe found the crash scenario "exceptionally rare" with no other similar collisions.

"Although we determined that the issue was rare, we felt the performance of this version of software in this situation was not good enough," Vogt wrote in a blog post. "We took the proactive step of notifying NHTSA that we would be filing a voluntary recall of previous versions of our software that were impacted by the issue." The CEO said such voluntary recalls will probably become "commonplace."

"We believe this is one of the great benefits of autonomous vehicles compared to human drivers; our entire fleet of AVs is able to rapidly improve, and we are able to carefully monitor that progress over time," he said.
The Cruise car was traveling about 10 miles per hour, and the collision caused only minor damage to its front fender, Vogt's blog post explained. San Francisco's buses have front and back coaches connected by articulated rubber, and when the Cruise taxi lost sight of the front half, it made the assumption that it was still moving (rather than recognizing that the back coach had stopped). Or, as Cruise told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, their vehicle ""inaccurately predicted the movement" of the bus. It was not the first San Francisco incident involving Cruise since June, when it became the first company in a major city to win the right to taxi passengers in driverless vehicles — in this case Chevrolet Bolts. The city's Municipal Transportation Agency and County Transportation Authority recorded at least 92 incidents from May to December 2022 in which autonomous ride-hailing vehicles caused problems on city streets, disrupting traffic, Muni transit and emergency responders, according to letters sent to the California Public Utilities Commission....

Just two days before the Cruise crash in March, the company had more problems with Muni during one of San Francisco's intense spring storms. A falling tree brought down a Muni line near Clay and Jones streets on March 21, and a witness reported on social media that two Cruise cars drove through caution tape into the downed wire. A company representative said neither car had passengers and teams were immediately dispatched to remove the vehicles.

On Jan. 22, a driverless Cruise car entered an active firefighting scene and nearly ran over hoses. Fire crews broke a car window to try to stop it.

Long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid shares a new report from the Economist: Thanks to innovations such as fractal colouration patterns, which mimic nature by repeating shapes at different scales, the distance from which naked eyes can quickly spot soldiers wearing the best camouflage has shrunk, by one reckoning, by a fifth over the past two decades. That is impressive. On today's battlefields, however, it is no longer enough to merely hide from human eyes.

People and kit are given away as well by signals beyond the visual spectrum, and devices that detect these wavelengths are getting better, lighter and cheaper. Thermal sensors are a case in point. Today, one that costs about $1,000 and weighs as little as five sachets of sugar can, in good weather, detect a warm vehicle as far off as 10km. As Hans Kariis, deputy head of signatures research at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, notes, that is well beyond the range at which a small drone would be spotted. Two decades ago, he adds, a less sensitive thermal sensor weighing a kilogram cost ten times as much.
And then there's automatic target-detection software, the article points out, like the Kestrel software deployed in more than 3,500 aircraft around the world, which "scans feeds of visual, infrared and radar data, and places red boxes around people and other potential targets, even as their positions in the frame move." And the threat has only increased with the arrival of satellite-based synthetic-aperture-radar (SAR) imagery.

But then the article lists examples of new camouflage that now tricks electronic sensors:

• Military vehicles affix hexagon-shaped sheets that can be cooled with electricity to blend into the temperature of their surroundings.
• Camouflage netting that absorbs (some) incoming radar beams with semi-conducting polymers while reducing heat signatures with insulation — and reflecting back the cooler temperature of the ground.
• Netherlands-based TNO makes "battery-powered sniper suits" embedded with 500 LEDs that match the luminosity and color of the surroundings using real-time data from a helmet camera.

"As automakers scour the planet for the metals it will take to build tens of millions of electric cars, they are deliberately taking a detour around one of the only places on earth where so much of what they need is laying around and available to be plucked," reports the Washington Post: The deep seabed is teeming with potato-sized rocks packed with the nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese EV manufacturers covet. But efforts by mining companies to harvest the nodules with undersea robots are hitting rough waters. EV manufacturers who need the minerals for their batteries are distancing themselves from the practice as diplomats and scientists sound an alarm over the ecological damage that could be caused by rushing to scrape the sea floor.

The misgivings of the auto companies are hardly assuaged by the messy, contentious deliberations over it all at the headquarters of the United Nations-chartered International Seabed Authority here. The authority, tasked with protecting and guiding development in international waters, has been in turmoil since the small Pacific Island nation of Nauru invoked a clause tucked in the Law of the Sea that could allow mining within months, likely before the full environmental impact is known or regulations are put in place....

More than 700 marine scientists have signed a petition demanding a [mining] moratorium, which is also supported by 13 countries. French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for a permanent ban.... Some car manufacturers, including BMW, Renault, Rivian, Volvo and VW publicly support a moratorium on seabed mining. GM, Ford and Daimler are, for now, keeping deep seabed materials out of their supply chain plans amid corporate concerns about environmental impact.
The Post got an interesting perspective from Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley's Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. "Auto companies don't want EV batteries associated with more destruction than they already have been," he tells them. "If ecological damage of these sensitive undersea areas comes to light after mining begins, they don't want to be a part of it."

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from NBC News: The Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration's efforts to block it from doing so, according to two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official. China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (at times flying figure-eight formations) and transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real time, the three officials said.

The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said. The three officials said China could have gathered much more intelligence from sensitive sites if not for the administration's efforts to move around potential targets and obscure the balloon's ability to pick up their electronic signals by stopping them from broadcasting or emitting signals.
America's Department of Defense "directed NBC News to comments senior officials made in February that the balloon had 'limited additive value' for intelligence collection by the Chinese government 'over and above what [China] is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low earth orbit.'"

The Free Software Foundation certifies products that meet their standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy. And they put out a new "Respects Your Freedom" certification on Thursday for ThinkPenguin's free software gigabit mini VPN router, the TPE-R1400.

From the FSF's announcement: This is ThinkPenguin's first device to receive RYF certification in 2023, adding to their vast catalogue of certified devices from previous years. As with previous routers from ThinkPenguin, the Free Software Gigabit Mini VPN Router ships with an FSF-endorsed fully free embedded GNU/Linux distribution called libreCMC. It also comes with a custom flavor of the U-Boot boot loader, assembled by Robert Call, the maintainer of libreCMC and a former FSF intern.

The router enables users to run their network connection through a VPN service, helping to simplify the process of keeping their communications secure and private. While ThinkPenguin offers a VPN service, users are not required to purchase a subscription to their service in order to use the router, and the device comes with detailed instructions on how to use the router with a wide variety of VPN providers.

"We're pleased to see ThinkPenguin continue with their commitment to bringing out devices that put software freedom as their first priority under the RYF program. The release of this router shows that ThinkPenguin is committed to the privacy and freedom of their users," said the FSF's executive director, Zoë Kooyman....

"The latest version of ThinkPenguin's VPN router lets its users take advantage of gigabit per second Internet connections while protecting their rights and privacy," said FSF's copyright and licensing associate, Craig Topham.

America's Department of Justice just launched an investigation into the leaking of classified documents from the U.S. Department of Defense, reports the Washington Post.

"On Wednesday, images showing some of the documents began circulating on the anonymous online message board 4chan and made their way to at least two mainstream social media platforms, Telegram and Twitter." Earlier Friday, The Washington Post obtained dozens of what appeared to be photographs showing classified documents, dating to late February and early March, that range from worldwide intelligence briefings to tactical-level battlefield updates and assessments of Ukraine's defense capabilities. They outline information about the Ukrainian and Russian militaries, and include highly sensitive U.S. analyses about China and other nations. The materials also reference highly classified sources and methods that the United States uses to collect such information, alarming U.S. national security officials who have seen them.... The material that appeared online includes photographs of documents labeled "Secret" or "Top Secret," and began appearing on Discord, a chat platform popular with gamers, according to a Post review.

In some cases, it appears that the slides were manipulated. For instance, one image features combat casualty data suggesting the number of Russian soldiers killed in the war is far below what the Pentagon publicly has assessed. Another version of the image showed higher Russian casualty figures. Besides the information on casualties that appeared to be manipulated to benefit the Russian government, U.S. officials who spoke to The Post said many of the leaked documents did not appear to be forged and looked consistent in format with CIA World Intelligence Review reports distributed at high levels within the White House, Pentagon and the State Department....

The documents appear to have been drawn from multiple reports and agencies, and concern matters other than Ukraine. Two pages, for example, are purportedly a "CIA Operations Center Intelligence Update," and includes information about events concerning Russia, Hungary and Iran.... Rachel E. VanLandingham, a former Air Force attorney and expert on military law, said that whoever is responsible for the leak "is in a world of hurt." Such breaches, she said, constitute "one of the most serious crimes that exist regarding U.S. national security...."

Skepticism abounded Friday among both Russian and Ukrainian officials aware of reports about the leaks, with each side accusing the other of being involved in a deliberate act of disinformation.
The Post notes one defense official told them "hundreds — if not thousands" of people had access to the documents, so their source "could be anyone."

But the photographs received by the Post were apparently taken from printed documents, and "classified documents may only be printed from computers in a secure facility, and each transaction is electronically logged, said Glenn Gerstell, a former general counsel with the National Security Agency who emphasized that he was speaking only about general procedures. "The fact that the documents were printed out should significantly narrow the universe of the initial inquiry."

A Cornell University researcher has developed sonar glasses that "hear" you without speaking. Engadget reports: The eyeglass attachment uses tiny microphones and speakers to read the words you mouth as you silently command it to pause or skip a music track, enter a passcode without touching your phone or work on CAD models without a keyboard. Cornell Ph.D. student Ruidong Zhang developed the system, which builds off a similar project the team created using a wireless earbud -- and models before that which relied on cameras. The glasses form factor removes the need to face a camera or put something in your ear. "Most technology in silent-speech recognition is limited to a select set of predetermined commands and requires the user to face or wear a camera, which is neither practical nor feasible," said Cheng Zhang, Cornell assistant professor of information science. "We're moving sonar onto the body."

The researchers say the system only requires a few minutes of training data (for example, reading a series of numbers) to learn a user's speech patterns. Then, once it's ready to work, it sends and receives sound waves across your face, sensing mouth movements while using a deep learning algorithm to analyze echo profiles in real time "with about 95 percent accuracy." The system does this while offloading data processing (wirelessly) to your smartphone, allowing the accessory to remain small and unobtrusive. The current version offers around 10 hours of battery life for acoustic sensing. Additionally, no data leaves your phone, eliminating privacy concerns. "We're very excited about this system because it really pushes the field forward on performance and privacy," said Cheng Zhang. "It's small, low-power and privacy-sensitive, which are all important features for deploying new, wearable technologies in the real world." "The team at Cornell's Smart Computer Interfaces for Future Interactions (SciFi) Lab is exploring commercializing the tech using a Cornell funding program," adds Engadget. "They're also looking into smart-glasses applications to track facial, eye and upper body movements."

A video of the eyeglasses can be viewed here.

Walmart plans to have its own network of electric vehicle charging stations by 2030 to tap into the growing adoption of EVs in the United States. Reuters reports: The new fast-charging stations will be placed at thousands of Walmart and Sam's Club stores, alongside nearly 1,300 it already offers as part of a deal with Volkswagen unit Electrify America, one of the country's largest open public EV networks. Walmart's more than 5,000 stores and Sam's Club warehouses are located within 10 miles of about 90% of Americans.

"We have the ability to address range and charging anxiety in a way that no one else can in this country," Vishal Kapadia, Walmart's recently appointed senior vice president of Energy Transformation, said in an interview. Owning its chargers, instead of partnering with a network operator, will help Walmart address reliability and cost issues, Kapadia said. Kapadia said he expects the new charge points to be direct-current fast chargers, with about four chargers on average installed per store.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The Russian government has banned more than 10,000 websites for content about the war in Ukraine since Moscow launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The blacklist includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and independent news outlets. Over the past year, Russians living inside the country have turned to censorship circumvention tools such as VPNs to pierce through the information blockade. But as dozens of virtual private networks get blocked, leaving users scrambling to maintain their access to free information, local activists and developers are coming up with new solutions. One of them is Amnezia VPN, a free, open source VPN client.

"We even do not advertise and promote it, and new users are still coming by the hundreds every day," says Mazay Banzaev, Amnezia VPN's founder. Unlike commercial VPNs that route users through company servers, which can be blocked, Amnezia VPN makes it simple for users to buy and set up their own servers. This allows them to choose their own IP address and use protocols that are harder to block. "More than half of the commercial VPNs in Russia have been blocked because it's easy enough to block them: They do not block them by protocols, but by IP addresses," says Banzaev. "[Amnezia] is an order of magnitude more resilient than a typical commercial VPN." Amnezia VPN is similar to Outline, a free and open source tool developed by Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Google. Amnezia was created in 2020 during a hackathon supported by Russian digital rights organization Roskomsvoboda. Even then, "it was clear that things were moving toward stricter censorship," says Banzaev. [...]

It is unclear how many users the service has, since the organization doesn't have a way to monitor user numbers, Banzaev says. However, Amnezia offers a Telegram bot called AmneziaFree, which shares VPN configurations that help users access blocked platforms and news; it has almost 100,000 users. The bot is currently struggling with overload, and users are complaining about spotty service. Banzaev says the Amnezia team is working to add new servers on a limited budget, and that they are also working on a new version of the service. "Amnezia is not only used in Russia," notes Wired. "The service has spread to Turkmenistan, Iran, China, and other countries where users have been struggling with free access to the web."

With no discussion, the Arkansas House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill that would require social media users in The Natural State to verify they're 18 years old or older to use the platforms. Arkansas Times reports: The proposal, backed by Gov. Sarah Sanders, is aimed at shielding minors from the harmful effects of social media. Young folks could use the platforms, but only if parents provide consent. Senate Bill 396, sponsored by Sen. Tyler Dees (R-Springdale) and Rep. Jon Eubanks (R-Paris), would require social media companies including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok to contract with third-party companies to perform age verification. Users would have to provide the third-party company with a digital driver's license. Dees also sponsored a bill, now law, that requires anyone who wants to watch online pornography to verify they're an adult.

The social media bill squeaked through the Senate with 18 yes votes, the bare minimum, but passed the House 82-10 with four voting present (same as no). No one asked any questions of Eubanks -- who assured his colleagues that Facebook had "the AI and algorithms" to keep track of what users had parental consent without holding on to sensitive data -- but because it was amended (to among other things exempt LinkedIn, the most boring social media platform), the bill has to go back to the Senate, where perhaps it will meet some resistance. Utah's governor signed two bills into law last month requiring companies like Meta, Snap and TikTok to get parents permission before teens could create accounts on their platforms. "The laws also require curfew, parental controls and age verification features," adds Engadget.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in 2020, we reported that emulator developers were using a hole in the Xbox Store's app distribution system to get around Microsoft's longstanding ban on emulators running on Xbox consoles. This week, though, many of the emulators that were distributed through that workaround have stopped working, the apparent victims of a new crackdown by Microsoft. Xbox emulator makers and users can't say they weren't warned. In the "Gaming and Xbox" section of Microsoft's official Store Policies, section 10.13.10 clearly states that "products that emulate a game system or game platform are not allowed on any device family."

Microsoft's enforcement of this clause has historically focused on removing emulators published as "private" UWP apps to the Xbox Store. Those apps could be distributed to whitelisted users via direct links accessed on the system's Edge browser, getting around the usual approval process for a public store listing. Previously, users who downloaded one of these "hidden" emulator listings before Microsoft's inevitable takedown could run that emulator on an unmodified retail system indefinitely. That is no longer the case; trying to launch downloaded versions of emulators like Xenia or Retrospection on an Xbox console now generates an error saying, "Unable to launch this game or app. The game or app you're trying to launch violates Microsoft Store policy and is not supported."

Google is ending support for the Dropcam and the Nest Secure home security system in one year, on April 8th, 2024. From a report: They are among the few remaining Nest products that haven't been brought over to Google Home, and their demise hints that the new Google Home app might almost be here. At least, no more than a year away. Surely. Google is also winding down the last few legacy Works with Nest connections, but not 'til September 29th. Existing Dropcam cameras will keep working until April 8th, 2024, after which you won't be able to access them from the Nest app. To soften the blow, Google's offering a free indoor wired Nest Cam to Dropcam owners who subscribe to Nest Aware. Nonsubscribers will get a 50 percent-off coupon. The promotion runs until May 7, 2024, so you can keep using your Dropcam until it stops working.