schwit1 shares a report from SpaceNews: The FAA announced Sept. 17 that it notified SpaceX of $633,009 in proposed fines for violating terms of its launch licenses during the June 2023 Falcon 9 launch of the Satria-1, or PSN Satria, broadband satellite and the July 2023 Falcon Heavy launch of Jupiter-3, or EchoStar-24, broadband satellite. Both launches were successful.

For the Satria-1 launch, the FAA said in its enforcement notice (PDF) to the company that SpaceX had requested in May 2023 changes to its communications plan to allow the use of a new launch control center at the company's "Hangar X" facility at the Kennedy Space Center and to skip a poll of launch controllers at two hours before liftoff. The FAA notified SpaceX shortly before the scheduled launch that it would not be able to approve those changes and modify the license in time, although the enforcement notice did not state why. SpaceX went ahead and used the Hangar X control center and skipped the "T-2 hours" poll for the launch. The agency concluded that violated two conditions of its launch license, which allowed for civil penalties of up to $283,009 each. The FAA said it planned to fine SpaceX a combined $350,000 for that launch.

A month later, SpaceX conducted the Falcon Heavy launch of Jupiter-3, but nine days before the launch the company requested a modification to its launch license to allow it to use a new tank farm for RP-1 fuel at KSC's Launch Complex 39A, according to a separate enforcement notice. The FAA notified SpaceX two days before the scheduled launch that the agency would not be able to modify the license in time, but SpaceX nonetheless used the new tank farm for the launch. The agency said it proposed to fine SpaceX the maximum $283,009 for that violation. Instead of participating in administrative procedures, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said it would take the FAA to court. "SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach," he posted on X.

Late last month, Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X to suspend operations in Brazil after a months-long dispute with X owner Elon Musk. The conflict centered on Musk's refusal to appoint a legal representative in the country and his refusal to take down disinformation and far-right accounts. However, on Wednesday, X bypassed the court-ordered block by utilizing third-party cloud services, allowing many Brazilian users to access the platform without the need for a virtual private network (VPN). From a report: The number of Brazilians accessing X is unknown, according to [Abrint, the Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers]. "I believe the change was probably intentional. Why would X use a third-party service that ends up being slower than its own?" said Basilio Perez, a board member at Abrint.

Any revised order from Brazil's national telecommunications agency Anatel, which is responsible for implementing the court ruling, will need to be more specific, because blocking cloud access is complex and may jeopardize government agencies and financial services providers, Perez said.

Anatel has identified the problem and is working to first notify content delivery network providers, followed by telecom companies to block access again to X in Brazil, according to a person familiar with the situation. The same person said it is not clear how long it will take for the providers to comply with the order...

In a statement tweeted from X's global government affairs account, the company said the restoration of service was an "inadvertent and temporary" side-effect of switching network providers.

Flappy Bird's original creator hasn't posted anything on social media since 2017. Until today.

"This morning, the game's creator Dong Nguyen posted a characteristically terse comment stating that he has nothing to do with the revival," reports TechCrunch, "and that he 'did not sell anything.' He added, 'I also don't support crypto'... The post makes it clear that Nguyen is not involved with the new project, and that he doesn't seem particularly happy about it." As for Nguyen's reference to crypto, while the foundation's current PR materials don't mention anything crypto-related, Varun Biniwale did some digging around hidden pages on the Flappy Bird Foundation website and found a reference to Flappy Bird flying "higher than ever on Solana as it soars into Web 3.0," though it's not clear whether that refers to upcoming features or abandoned plans.
More from Fortune: Exactly what is going to happen with this zombified version of Flappy Bird is unclear, but digging through data and files has revealed things like different birds, loot boxes, and the idea that this is some sort of crypto play by the company involved. From a page on their website about the new Flappy Bird... "[D]evelopers and creators can build, play and earn from the legendary Flappy Bird IP."
Fortune concludes "it's crypto, it's NFTs and everyone is so annoyed by this almost every tweet of the resurrected Twitter account has even been 'Community Noted' revealing its crypto ties and snapping up of Nguyen's trademark."

PC Gamer adds that the Foundation acquired the Flappy Bird trademark from Gametech Holdings LLC. "And here there's a slight whiff of skullduggery." Dong Nguyen originally applied for the trademark in 2014, alongside a little drawing of the logo. This application then seemed to sit in limbo for many years, eventually being opposed by a Delaware-based company called Gametech. As this was going on, the U.S. patent office granted a trademark registration for Flappy Bird in 2018 (four years after the game was removed from sale) to another Delaware company called Mobile Media Matters. While I can't be exact on the link between Mobile Media Matters and Gametech, both companies' legal filings give the same Delaware address.

Subsequent to this there's been a legal disagreement between Gametech and Dong Nguyen, except Nguyen doesn't seem to have bothered representing himself or standing up for the trademark, which has ultimately led to it being classed as abandoned (a decade after he filed for it) and acquired by Gametech...

The Flappy Bird Foundation does have one ready-made comeback. As well as the rights to Flappy Bird it has acquired the rights to Piou Piou vs. Cactus, a mobile title that was the primary inspiration behind Flappy Bird, and employs the game's creator who goes by the handle, ahem, of Kek. "Today is a milestone not just in gaming but for me personally," says Kek. "It's so cool to see how influential Piou Piou has been for developers and hundreds of millions of gamers over the years. It's incredible to work alongside such a dedicated team of fans and creators who are truly passionate about changing the industry narrative and together bringing the original Flappy Bird back to life...." Way back in 2014, Kek said he'd contacted Nguyen about the resemblance, "and he told me he doesn't think he knew about my game when he made Flappy Bird. The games are very similar. And even if I did not invent the gameplay concept, the graphics are very close, and, of course, the concept."

The games are undeniably similar, but there are differences, and obviously the most important one is that, for whatever reason, Piou Piou didn't do much while Flappy Bird went stratospheric with a similar idea three years later.

Needless to say, the announcement and press release of the Flappy Bird Foundation does not mention Dong Nguyen once.

"A two-day AI Labor Summit between AFL-CIO leaders and Microsoft executives this week reflects the tech giant's revamped approach to unions," writes GeekWire, "which includes a pledge by the company to incorporate feedback from labor unions and their members into the development of artificial intelligence."

But just two days later, "Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer announced it was game over for the jobs of another 650 Microsoft staffers (on top of an earlier 1,900 employee staff reduction)," writes long-time Slashdot reader theodp, "cuts that Spencer made clear were related to Microsoft's $69B acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023." Interestingly, Microsoft's Smith in October 2023 affirmed a "groundbreaking neutrality agreement" with the Communications Workers of America union (CWA) — designed to go into effect if Microsoft was successful in its acquisition of Activision Blizzard — in which Microsoft acknowledged the rights of its employees to unionize and pledged to work constructively with any who did. At the same time, Microsoft made it clear that it hoped its employees wouldn't feel the need to form or join unions, saying they would "never need to organize to have a dialogue with Microsoft's leaders."

In July 2023, the AFL-CIO applauded Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition and the Microsoft-CWA agreement, which AFL-CIO union federation president Liz Shuler said "sets a new standard for respecting workers' rights in the video game industry and the larger technology sector." And in December 2023, Shuler thanked Smith for Microsoft's "absolutely historic partnership" on AI and the Future of the Workforce, which Shuler suggested "can be mutually beneficial for workers, for businesses, and for our country as a whole."
Thursday the CWA union issued critical remarks about the layoffs at Microsoft Gaming (which were later retweeted by the @AFLCIO Twitter account).

"While we would hope that a company like Microsoft with $88 billion in profits last year could achieve 'long-term success' without destroying the livelihoods of 650 of our colleagues, heartless layoffs like these have become all too common."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: You can tell a lot about someone from their eyes. They can indicate how tired you are, the type of mood you're in, and potentially provide clues about health problems. But your eyes could also leak more secretive information: your passwords, PINs, and messages you type. Today, a group of six computer scientists are revealing a new attack against Apple's Vision Pro mixed reality headset where exposed eye-tracking data allowed them to decipher what people entered on the device's virtual keyboard. The attack, dubbed GAZEploit and shared exclusively with WIRED, allowed the researchers to successfully reconstruct passwords, PINs, and messages people typed with their eyes. "Based on the direction of the eye movement, the hacker can determine which key the victim is now typing," says Hanqiu Wang, one of the leading researchers involved in the work. They identified the correct letters people typed in passwords 77 percent of the time within five guesses and 92 percent of the time in messages.

To be clear, the researchers did not gain access to Apple's headset to see what they were viewing. Instead, they worked out what people were typing by remotely analyzing the eye movements of a virtual avatar created by the Vision Pro. This avatar can be used in Zoom calls, Teams, Slack, Reddit, Tinder, Twitter, Skype, and FaceTime. The researchers alerted Apple to the vulnerability in April, and the company issued a patch to stop the potential for data to leak at the end of July. It is the first attack to exploit people's "gaze" data in this way, the researchers say. The findings underline how people's biometric data -- information and measurements about your body -- can expose sensitive information and beused as part of the burgeoning surveillance industry.

The GAZEploit attack consists of two parts, says Zhan, one of the lead researchers. First, the researchers created a way to identify when someone wearing the Vision Pro is typing by analyzing the 3D avatar they are sharing. For this, they trained a recurrent neural network, a type of deep learning model, with recordings of 30 people's avatars while they completed a variety of typing tasks. When someone is typing using the Vision Pro, their gaze fixates on the key they are likely to press, the researchers say, before quickly moving to the next key. "When we are typing our gaze will show some regular patterns," Zhan says. Wang says these patterns are more common during typing than if someone is browsing a website or watching a video while wearing the headset. "During tasks like gaze typing, the frequency of your eye blinking decreases because you are more focused," Wang says. In short: Looking at a QWERTY keyboard and moving between the letters is a pretty distinct behavior.

The second part of the research, Zhan explains, uses geometric calculations to work out where someone has positioned the keyboard and the size they've made it. "The only requirement is that as long as we get enough gaze information that can accurately recover the keyboard, then all following keystrokes can be detected." Combining these two elements, they were able to predict the keys someone was likely to be typing. In a series of lab tests, they didn't have any knowledge of the victim's typing habits, speed, or know where the keyboard was placed. However, the researchers could predict the correct letters typed, in a maximum of five guesses, with 92.1 percent accuracy in messages, 77 percent of the time for passwords, 73 percent of the time for PINs, and 86.1 percent of occasions for emails, URLs, and webpages. (On the first guess, the letters would be right between 35 and 59 percent of the time, depending on what kind of information they were trying to work out.) Duplicate letters and typos add extra challenges.

Steven Levy, writing for Wired: My first story for WIRED -- yep, 31 years ago -- looked at a group of "crypto rebels" who were trying to pry strong encryption technology from the government-classified world and send it into the mainstream. Naturally I attempted to speak to someone at the National Security Agency for comment and ideally get a window into its thinking. Unsurprisingly, that was a no-go, because the NSA was famous for its reticence. Eventually we agreed that I could fax (!) a list of questions. In return I got an unsigned response in unhelpful bureaucratese that didn't address my queries. Even that represented a loosening of what once was total blackout on anything having to do with this ultra-secretive intelligence agency. For decades after its post-World War II founding, the government revealed nothing, not even the name, of this agency and its activities. Those in the know referred to it as "No Such Agency."

In recent years, the widespread adoption of encryption technology and the vital need for cybersecurity has led to more openness. Its directors began to speak in public; in 2012, NSA director Keith Alexander actually keynoted Defcon. I'd spent the entire 1990s lobbying to visit the agency for my book Crypto; in 2013, I finally crossed the threshold of its iconic Fort Meade Headquarters for an on-the-record conversation with officials, including Alexander. NSA now has social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. And there is a form on the agency website for podcasters to request guest appearances by an actual NSA-ite.

So it shouldn't be a total shock that NSA is now doing its own podcast. You don't need to be an intelligence agency to know that pods are a unique way to tell stories and hold people's attention. The first two episodes of the seven-part season dropped this week. It's called No Such Podcast, earning some self-irony points from the get-go. In keeping with the openness vibe, the NSA granted me an interview with an official in charge of the project -- one of the de facto podcast producers, a title that apparently is still not an official NSA job posting. Since NSA still gotta NSA, I can't use this person's name. But my source did point out that in the podcast itself, both the hosts and the guests -- who are past and present agency officials -- speak under their actual identities.

In the days following Brazil's shutdown of X, the decentralized social networking startup Bluesky added over 2 million new users, up from just half a million as of Friday. "This rapid growth led some users to encounter the occasional error that would state there were 'Not Enough Resources' to handle requests, as Bluesky engineers scrambled to keep the servers stable under the influx of new sign-ups," reports TechCrunch's Sarah Perez. From the report: As new users downloaded the app, Bluesky jumped to becoming the app to No. 1 in Brazil over the weekend, ahead of Meta's X competitor, Instagram Threads. According to app intelligence firm Appfigures, Bluesky's total downloads soared by 10,584% this weekend compared to last, and its downloads in Brazil were up by a whopping 1,018,952%. The growth seems to be having a halo effect, as downloads outside Brazil also rose by 584%, the firm noted. In part, this is due to Bluesky receiving downloads in 22 countries where it had barely seen any traction before.

In terms of absolute downloads, countries that saw the most installs outside Brazil included the U.S., Portugal, the U.K., Canada and Spain. Those with the most download growth, however, were Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Romania. Most of the latter group jumped from single-digit growth to growth in the thousands. Bluesky's newcomers have actively engaged on the platform, too, driving up other key metrics.

As one Bluesky engineer remarked, the number of likes on the social network grew to 104.6 million over the past four-day period, up from just 13 million when compared with a similar period just a week ago. Follows also grew from 1.4 million to 100.8 million while reposts grew from 1.3 million to 11 million. As of Monday, Bluesky said it had added 2.11 million users during the past four days, up from 26,000 users it had added in the week-ago period. In addition, the company noted it had seen "significantly more than a 100% [daily active users] increase." On Tuesday, Bluesky told TechCrunch the number is now 2.4 million and continues to grow "by the minute."

Casey Newton, former senior editor at the Verge, weighs in on Platformer about the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.

"Fending off onerous speech regulations and overzealous prosecutors requires that platform builders act responsibly. Telegram never even pretended to." Officially, Telegram's terms of service prohibit users from posting illegal pornographic content or promotions of violence on public channels. But as the Stanford Internet Observatory noted last year in an analysis of how CSAM spreads online, these terms implicitly permit users who share CSAM in private channels as much as they want to. "There's illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?" asks a question on Telegram's FAQ page. The company declares that it will not intervene in any circumstances: "All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants," it states. "We do not process any requests related to them...."

Telegram can look at the contents of private messages, making it vulnerable to law enforcement requests for that data. Anticipating these requests, Telegram created a kind of jurisdictional obstacle course for law enforcement that (it says) none of them have successfully navigated so far. From the FAQ again:

To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data. [...] To this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments.

As a result, investigation after investigation finds that Telegram is a significant vector for the spread of CSAM.... The company's refusal to answer almost any law enforcement request, no matter how dire, has enabled some truly vile behavior. "Telegram is another level," Brian Fishman, Meta's former anti-terrorism chief, wrote in a post on Threads. "It has been the key hub for ISIS for a decade. It tolerates CSAM. Its ignored reasonable [law enforcement] engagement for YEARS. It's not 'light' content moderation; it's a different approach entirely.
The article asks whether France's action "will embolden countries around the world to prosecute platform CEOs criminally for failing to turn over user data." On the other hand, Telegram really does seem to be actively enabling a staggering amount of abuse. And while it's disturbing to see state power used indiscriminately to snoop on private conversations, it's equally disturbing to see a private company declare itself to be above the law.

Given its behavior, a legal intervention into Telegram's business practices was inevitable. But the end of private conversation, and end-to-end encryption, need not be.

A longtime Slashdot reader writes: Regular Slashdot users will certainly be aware of the saga unfolding between the country of Brazil and X. Reuters has already reported that what I have to relay here will come as no surprise to Elon Musk, but reporting on CNN confirms that Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes has ordered X to suspend operations in Brazil until X names a representative to appear on X's behalf in Brazilian Courts.

Is this the end of X or some brilliant Machiavellian ploy on the part of Elon Musk? Only time and the informed and spirited debate of the users here at /. can be sure. Here's a recap of the saga, as told by X's Grok-2 chatbot: The Beginning: Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court Justice with a reputation for tackling misinformation, especially around elections, found himself at odds with Elon Musk, the space-faring, electric-car magnate turned social media mogul. The conflict kicked off when Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts in Brazil, part of his broader crackdown on what he deemed as misinformation.

The Escalation: Musk, never one to shy away from a fight, especially when it involves what he perceives as free speech issues, declared on X that he would not comply with Moraes' orders. This defiance wasn't just a tweet; it was a digital declaration of war. Musk accused Moraes of overstepping his bounds, betraying the constitution, and even likened him to Darth Vader in a less than flattering comparison. Moraes, not amused, opened an investigation into Musk for obstruction of justice, accusing him of inciting disobedience and disrespecting Brazil's sovereignty. The stakes were raised with fines of around $20,000 per day for each reactivated account, and threats of arresting X employees in Brazil.

The Drama Unfolds: The internet, as it does, had a field day. Posts on X ranged from Musk supporters calling Moraes a dictator to others backing Moraes, arguing he was defending democracy against foreign billionaires. The conflict became a global spectacle, with Musk's posts drawing international attention, comparing the situation to a battle for free speech versus censorship. Musk, in true Musk fashion, didn't just stop at defiance. He shared all of Moraes' demands publicly, suggesting users use VPNs, and even hinted at closing X's operations in Brazil, which eventually happened, citing the need to protect staff safety.

The Latest Chapter: Recently, X announced the closure of its operations in Brazil, a move seen as the culmination of this legal and ideological battle. Musk framed it as a stand against what he saw as an assault on free speech, while critics viewed it as an overreaction or a strategic retreat.

theodp writes: Typos happen to the best of us, but spelling still counts when it comes to software development. So, it's kind of surprising to see that both Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and former AWS CEO Adam Selipsky failed to notice an embarrassing typo in a demo video they offered to their millions of followers on social media as evidence of Amazon Q AI's Java upgrade capabilities, which Amazon has been trumpeting for months in SEC filings, shareholder communication, and Amazon's latest earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

Just 37 seconds into the demo of the software that Amazon says saved it 4,500 developer-years of work and provided an additional $260M in annualized efficiency gains, Amazon Q kicks off the Java upgrade conversation by saying, "I can help you upgrade your Jave [sic] 8 and 11 codebases to Java 17." The embarrassing misspelling did prompt Twitter user @archo5dev to alert Jassy to the typo, but there's been no response yet from Jassy, who boasted that Amazon developers were unable to find any mistakes in Q's work in "79% of the auto-generated code reviews."

It's probably worth noting that both Jassy and Selipsky opted to showcase a drop-dead simple demo of Amazon Q Code Transformation rather than some of the lengthier and less-magical demos of the product.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shared this anecdote about Amazon's GenAI assistant for software development, Amazon Q: On Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took to Twitter to boast that using Amazon Q to do Java upgrades has already saved Amazon from having to pay for 4,500 developer-years of work. ("Yes, that number is crazy but, real," writes Jassy). And Jassy says it also provided Amazon with an additional $260M in annualized efficiency gains from enhanced security and reduced infrastructure costs.

"Our developers shipped 79% of the auto-generated code reviews without any additional changes," Jassy explained. "This is a great example of how large-scale enterprises can gain significant efficiencies in foundational software hygiene work by leveraging Amazon Q."

Jassy — who FORTUNE reported had no formal training in computer science — also touted Amazon Q's Java upgrade prowess in his Letter to Shareholders earlier this year, as has Amazon in its recent SEC filings ("today, developers can save months using Q to move from older versions of Java to newer, more secure and capable ones; in the near future, Q will help developers transform their .net code as well"). Earlier this week, Business Insider reported on a leaked recording of a fireside chat in which AWS CEO Matt Garman predicted a paradigm shift in coding as a career in the foreseeable future with the prevalence of AI. According to Garman, "If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can't exactly predict where it is — it's possible that most developers are not coding."

Boeing "will return its Starliner capsule from the International Space Station without the NASA astronauts," reports CNBC. Though they've been on the space station since early June, the plan is to have them stay "for about six more months before flying home in February on SpaceX's Crew-9 vehicle.

"The test flight was originally intended to last about nine days." The decision to bring Starliner back from the ISS empty marks a dramatic about-face for NASA and Boeing, as the organizations were previously adamant that the capsule was the primary choice for returning the crew. But Starliner's crew flight test, which had been seen as the final major milestone in the spacecraft's development, faced problems — most notably with its propulsion system.

"Boeing has worked very hard with NASA to get the necessary data to make this decision," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference with top NASA officials at Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday. "We want to further understand the root causes and understand the design improvements so that the Boeing Starliner will serve as an important part of our assured crew access to the ISS."

He reiterated that test flights are "neither safe, nor routine," and that the decision was the "result of a commitment to safety." NASA will now conduct another phase of its Flight Readiness Review to determine when to bring the empty Starliner home. Boeing officials had been adamant in press briefings that Starliner was safe for the astronauts to fly home in the event of an emergency, despite delaying the return multiple times. NASA said there was a "technical disagreement" between the agency and the aerospace company, and said it evaluated risk differently than Boeing for returning its crew.

Nonetheless, NASA officials repeatedly expressed support for Boeing, and Nelson said he was "100% certain" that Starliner would be able to launch with a crew again someday.
NASA posted on X.com that they'd reached the decision "after extensive review by experts across the agency.

And CNBC adds that "Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator, said NASA officials were unanimous in their decision to choose SpaceX to bring the crew home."

Monday brought spectacular footage of an explosion at a UK rocket test site after an engine test went awry. The plan had been to test-fire all of a rocket stage's nine engines at the same time — they've successfully ignited them more than a hundred times — but this time one of the first eight had an "unusual" anomaly — "most likely a fire in the oxygen pump," according to a video posted by space company RFA on X.com.

The trouble "spread onto neighboring engines," eventually leading to a billowing jet of fire from the side of the vehicle. ("The engine-propellant manifold system was damaged to such a great extent that kerosene kept fueling the fire.")

Slashdot reader AleRunner writes: A rocket company has vowed to return to regular operations "as soon as possible" after an explosion during a test at the UK's new spaceport in Shetland. The explosion happened after "an "anomaly" had led to "the loss of the stage" — but there were no injuries according to a Guardian report. The test was carried out by German company Rocket Factory Augsburg which hopes to make the first UK vertical rocket launch into orbit... "We develop iteratively with an emphasis on real testing.
"This is part of our philosophy and we were aware of the higher risks attached to this approach. Our goal is to return to regular operations as soon as possible."
"In true RFA fashion, we're being as transparent as possible," the company posted Friday on X.com, "and sharing our own raw footage of the incident." The day of the explosion they'd posted that "The launch pad has been saved and is secured," and Friday posted that six-minute video explaining what happened. (It emphasizes there's an improved version of this stage that's already been built.)

The Guardian added that the explosion comes three months after RFA's successful 8-second test firing of its rocket engines — the spaceport's first rocket test.

Dozens of VPN apps have vanished from Brazil's Apple App Store, including popular services NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark. Simone Magliano, Head of Research at Top10VPN, reports that at least 30 VPN apps have become unavailable, though their store listings remained visible. Proton VPN, a major free VPN provider, confirmed the App Store issues, speculating it could be "a bug, or Apple implementing a secret censorship order." The move follows X, formerly Twitter, announcing over the weekend that it was shutting its Brazil operations, citing a "secret order" to arrest its legal representative if X didn't "comply with his [Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Morae] censorship orders."

X.com "says it's ending business operations in Brazil effective immediately," reports Engadget, "but the service will remain available to users in the country." The company says Alexandre de Moraes, the president of the Superior Electoral Court and a justice of the Supreme Federal Court, threatened one of X's legal representatives with arrest if it did not "comply with his censorship orders." According to Reuters, de Moreas demanded that X remove certain content from its platform.

Rather than comply, X has opted to end its local operations "to protect the safety of our staff."

According to X, de Moraes made the threat in a "secret order," which it shared publicly. X owner Elon Musk claimed that the demand "would require us to break (in secret) Brazilian, Argentinian, American and international law."

Ars Technica's Ashley Belanger reports: Artists defending a class-action lawsuit are claiming a major win this week in their fight to stop the most sophisticated AI image generators from copying billions of artworks to train AI models and replicate their styles without compensating artists. In an order on Monday, US district judge William Orrick denied key parts of motions to dismiss from Stability AI, Midjourney, Runway AI, and DeviantArt. The court will now allow artists to proceed with discovery on claims that AI image generators relying on Stable Diffusion violate both the Copyright Act and the Lanham Act, which protects artists from commercial misuse of their names and unique styles.

"We won BIG," an artist plaintiff, Karla Ortiz, wrote on X (formerly Twitter), celebrating the order. "Not only do we proceed on our copyright claims," but "this order also means companies who utilize" Stable Diffusion models and LAION-like datasets that scrape artists' works for AI training without permission "could now be liable for copyright infringement violations, amongst other violations." Lawyers for the artists, Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick, told Ars that artists suing "consider the Court's order a significant step forward for the case," as "the Court allowed Plaintiffs' core copyright-infringement claims against all four defendants to proceed."

Russia has blocked access to the encrypted Signal messaging app to "prevent the messenger's use of terrorist and extremist purposes." YouTube is also facing mass outages following repeated slowdowns in recent weeks. The Associated Press reports: Russian authorities expanded their crackdown on dissent and free media after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. They have blocked multiple independent Russian-language media outlets critical of the Kremlin, and cut access to Twitter, which later became X, as well as Meta's Facebook and Instagram.

In the latest blow to the freedom of information, YouTube faced mass outages on Thursday following repeated slowdowns in recent weeks. Russian authorities have blamed the slowdowns on Google's failure to upgrade its equipment in Russia, but many experts have challenged the claim, arguing that the likely reason for the slowdowns and the latest outage was the Kremlin's desire to shut public access to a major platform that carries opposition views.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in July 2022, when mobile app metrics firm Branch acquired the popular and well-regarded Nova Launcher for Android, the app's site put up one of those self-directed FAQ posts about it. Under the question heading "What does Branch want with Nova?," Nova founder and creator Kevin Barry started his response with, "Not to mess it up, don't worry!" Branch (formerly/sometimes Branch Metrics) is a firm concerned with helping businesses track the links that lead into their apps, whether from SMS, email, marketing, or inside other apps. Nova, with its Sesame Search tool that helped users find and access deeper links -- like heading straight to calling a car, rather than just opening a rideshare app -- seemed like a reasonable fit. Barry wrote that he had received a number of acquisition offers over the years, but he didn't want to be swallowed by a giant corporation, an OEM, or a volatile startup. "Branch is different," he wrote then, because they wanted to add staff to Nova, keep it available to the public, and mostly leave it alone.

Two years later, Branch has left Nova Launcher a bit too alone. As documented on Nova's official X (formerly Twitter) account, and transcripts from its Discord, as of Thursday Nova had "gone from a team of around a dozen people" to just Barry, the founder, working alone. The Nova cuts were part of "a massive layoff" of purportedly more than 100 people across all of Branch, according to now-former Nova workers. Barry wrote that he would keep working on Nova, "However I have less resources." He would need to "cut scope" on an upcoming Nova release, he wrote. Other employees noted that customer support, marketing, and even correspondence would likely be strained or disappear. "While Nova is not dead (despite mine and others' eulogistic tones), it's certainly not positioned to launch bold new features or plot new futures," writes Ars' Kevin Purdy, in closing. "Here's hoping Barry can make a go of Nova Launcher for as long as it's viable for him."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On July 19, Yelp informed select indie developers that they would have to switch to paid accounts, due to high API usage. Developers were given four days to make the change, in a move that echoes recent communication bungles by Reddit and Twitter. When the developers replied to the July 19 email, Yelp sent a deck of pricing tiers with base pricing starting from $229 per month for a limit of 1,000 API calls per day. Developers were concerned that other, more affordable options weren't mentioned in the deck. Yelp said the pricing is equivalent and simply presented in different ways. The method of communication and lack of transparency has angered developers, some of whom shuttered their services, even after Yelp gave them a 90-day leeway and apologized. While the company has issued an apology email to developers and extended their free usage by 90 days, it may not be enough to keep these frustrated developers from moving to new platforms.

"We apologize for last week's abbreviated transition that impacted a small percentage of developers and have extended access to these users," a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. "Yelp sunsetted free, commercial, unlimited use of the Yelp Fusion API in 2019 and has been in the process of migrating developers to a paid program over the last several years. The developer community is important to Yelp, and we've heard their feedback about the transition period from the free Yelp Fusion API to our paid program."

In 2006 MySpace reportedly became America's most-visited web site — passing both Google and Yahoo Mail.

So what happened? TribLive reports: The co-founders, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, sold MySpace to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for $580 million in 2005, and that company sold it to the online advertising company Specific Media and Justin Timberlake in 2011, which later became the ad tech firm Viant, according to SlashGear. Viant was bought by Time in 2016, which was acquired by Meredith Corporation at the end of 2017, according to The Guardian. Meredith then sold Myspace to Viant Technology LLC, which currently operates the platform, SlashGear said.

During its time under Timberlake, Myspace morphed from a social media platfrom and turned over a new leaf as a music discovery site, SlashGear reported. The once booming online atmosphere has turned into a ghost town, according to The Guardian. Despite the number of people on Myspace dwindling, a handful of devoted users remains.
The glory days of MySpace drew this bittersweet remembrance from TechRadar: Not everyone on the TechRadar team looks back on those early MySpace years fondly, with our US editor in chief Lance Ulanoff recalling that it "it was like peoples' brains had been turned inside out and whatever didn't stick, dropped onto the page and was represented as a GIF".

Many of us do, though, remember picking our Top 8s (the site's weird ranking system for your friends) and decorating our MySpace pages with as many flashing lights as possible.