Starlink has debuted in Japan, making it the first Asian nation to receive SpaceX's satellite internet service. From a report: Much of the country's north, including Tokyo, can now receive Starlink's signals, according to a map the startup shared on Twitter. Other areas including southern Japan and Hokkaido are expected to receive the service by the fourth quarter, before neighboring South Korea early next year.

Andy Lapsa and Tom Feldman, former Blue Origin engineers and the founders of Stoke Space, are working to develop the first fully recyclable space rocket -- one that features a reusable first and second stage. Here's an excerpt from Ars Technica's exclusive report, written by Eric Berger: In the 20 months since its initial seed round of funding, Stoke has built a second-stage engine, a prototype for the second stage, turbopumps, and manufacturing facilities. It also increased its headcount to 72 people and finalized the overall design for the rocket, which has a lift capacity of 1.65 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, in fully reusable mode. Last month, the company started to test-fire its upper-stage engines at a facility in Moses Lake, Washington. The images and video show an intriguing-looking ring with 15 discrete thrusters firing for several seconds. The circular structure is 13 feet in diameter, and this novel-looking design is Stoke's answer to one of the biggest challenges of getting a second stage back from orbit.

Most commonly, a traditional rocket has an upper stage with a single engine. This second-stage rocket engine has a larger nozzle -- often bell-shaped -- to optimize the flow of engine exhaust in a vacuum. Because all parts of a rocket are designed to be as light as possible, such extended nozzles are often fairly fragile because they're only exposed above Earth's atmosphere. So one problem with getting an upper stage back from Earth, especially if you want to use the engine to control and slow its descent, is protecting this large nozzle. One way to do that is to bury the engine nozzle in a large heat shield, but that would require more structure and mass, and it may not be dynamically stable. Stoke's answer was using a ring of 30 smaller thrusters. (The tests last month only employed 15 of the 30 thrusters). In a vacuum, the plumes from these nozzles are designed to merge and act as one. And during reentry, with a smaller number of smaller thrusters firing, it's easier to protect the nozzles. "What you're seeing in the photos of the test is a high-performance upper-stage engine that can operate within atmosphere at deep throttle to support vertical landing but then also perform at a higher ISP than some variants of the RL 10 engine in space," Lapsa said.

Another significant second-stage problem is protecting the whole vehicle from the super-heated atmosphere during reentry. NASA's Space Shuttle accomplished this with brittle thermal tiles, but these required 30,000 employee hours to inspect, test, and refurbish between flights. SpaceX is using a different type of ceramic tile, designed to be more reusable, for Starship. Given Stoke's background in rocket engines, Lapsa said it made the most sense to try a regeneratively cooled heat shield. The vehicle's ductile metallic outer layer will be lined with small cavities to flow propellant through the material to keep it cool during reentry. The second stage, therefore, will return to Earth somewhat like a space capsule -- base first, with the regeneratively cooled heat shield.

Stoke Space has a very long road ahead of it to reach space. Engine tests are an important step, but they're only the first step of many. Next up for the company is "hop" tests with a full-scale version of the second stage at the Moses Lake facility in central Washington. This prototype won't have a fairing as it would during launch, but it will still stand 19 feet tall. Initially, the tests will be low-altitude, probably measured in hundreds of feet. If there's an engineering need to go higher, the company will consider that, Lapsa said. But for now, the goal is to prove the capability to control the rocket during ascent and descent and make a soft landing. This is a shockingly difficult guidance, navigation, and control problem, especially with a novel system of distributed thrusters. "This is kind of a final proof point of this architecture," Lapsa said. "It is new. It's different. It's weird. It's original. There were a lot of questions that we had about how this thing is going to work. But we've already mitigated a lot of risk." If Stoke can manage to land the upper stage, it can move ahead with the first stage and start to turn the yet-unnamed rocket into an orbital vehicle. It sounds easy, but it's not...

Game developer Sam Chiet has found another use for Microsoft Notepad. The ingenious creator has gotten Doom (1993) to run at 60 FPS through the boring text editor in Windows. Tom's Hardware reports: Chiet highlighted that he didn't have to modify the Notepad application. Dubbed "NotepadDOOM," the project is fully playable. Although Chiet didn't explain how the mod works, has committed to launching NotepadDOOM for other Doom fans to try out. Chiet said in a subsequent tweet that "it'll take some work to polish NotepadDOOM into something releasable, but it'll almost certainly happen over the next couple days." John Romero, one of Doom's creators, was impressed and replied to Chiet in a tweet that the mod was "incredible."

You can see the iconic 1993 shooter running in its full glory on Chiet's YouTube channel. It's Notepad, so obviously, Chiet replaced the graphics with characters and numbers. The gameplay looks pretty smooth, although we did catch some screen tearing. However, that could be because Notepad can't write the text fast enough on screen.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's still possible to learn a lot of interesting things about old operating systems. Sometimes, those things are already documented (on a blog post) that miraculously still exist. One such quirk showed up recently when someone noticed how Microsoft made sure that SimCity and other popular apps worked on Windows 95. A recent tweet by @Kalyoshika highlights an excerpt from a blog post by Fog Creek Software co-founder, Stack Overflow co-creator, and longtime software blogger Joel Spolsky. The larger post is about chicken-and-egg OS/software appeal and demand. The part that caught the eye of a Hardcore Gaming 101 podcast co-host is how the Windows 3.1 version of SimCity worked on the Windows 95 system. Windows 95 merged MS-DOS and Windows apps, upgraded APIs from 16 to 32-bit, and was hyper-marketed. A popular app like SimCity, which sold more than 5 million copies, needed to work without a hitch.

Spolsky's post summarizes how SimCity became Windows 95-ready, as he heard it, without input from Maxis or user workarounds: "Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here's the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn't working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn't free memory right away. That's the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95."

Spolsky (in 2000) considers this a credit to Microsoft and an example of how to break the chicken-and-egg problem: "provide a backwards compatibility mode which either delivers a truckload of chickens, or a truckload of eggs, depending on how you look at it, and sit back and rake in the bucks." Windows developers may have deserved some sit-back time, seeing the extent of the tweaks they often have to make for individual games and apps in Windows 95. Further in @Kalyoshika's replies, you can find another example, pulled from the Compatibility Administrator in Windows' Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK). A screenshot from @code_and_beer shows how Windows NT, upon detecting files typically installed with Final Fantasy VII, will implement a fittingly titled compatibility fix: "Win95VersionLie." Simply telling the game that it's on Windows 95 seems to fix a major issue with its operation, along with a few other emulation and virtualization tweaks. "Mike Perry, former creative director at Sim empire Maxis (and later EA), noted later that there was, technically, a 32-bit Windows 95 version of Sim City available, as shown by the 'Deluxe Edition' bundle of the game," adds Ars. "He also states that Ross worked for Microsoft after leaving Maxis, which would further explain why Microsoft was so keen to ensure people could keep building parks in the perfect grid position to improve resident happiness."

Christopher Slayton spent two months exploring black holes, identifying the colors of Saturn's rings and looking at his home planet from outer space. Mr. Slayton, 18, didn't have to leave his desk to do so. He set out to build the entire observable universe, block by block, in Minecraft, a video game where users build and explore worlds. From a report: By the end, he felt as if he had traveled to every corner of the universe. "Everyone freaks out about the power and expansiveness of the universe, which I never really got that much," he said. But after working for a month and 15 days to build it and additional two weeks to create a YouTube video unveiling it, "I realized even more how beautiful it is." Mr. Slayton, known as ChrisDaCow on his Minecraft-focused YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok accounts, has been playing the game for almost a decade, and he's not a user of any other games, he said. He started posting videos of his "builds," which are landscapes he creates inside the game, on YouTube in 2019. This channel has become his main priority since he graduated high school this spring.

[...] Exploring and learning concepts via Minecraft can be seen as a generational shift, said Ken Thompson, an assistant professor of digital game design at the University of Connecticut. About two-thirds of Americans play video games, according to a 2022 industry report. Professor Thompson said young people, such as Mr. Slayton, could apply problem solving and critical thinking when tackling projects such as the universe creation. "There are very serious applications," he said, adding, "then there's also this wonderful science side of it where we're experimenting with systems that are otherwise really hard to conceptualize." In 2022, some students at his university held a commencement ceremony in Minecraft, organized by the gaming club, after the in-person event was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. They created the campus and avatars representing students and even faculty to stage the virtual gathering.

Tom's Hardware reports: We recently broke the news that Intel's Alder Lake BIOS source code had been leaked to 4chan and Github, with the 6GB file containing tools and code for building and optimizing BIOS/UEFI images. We reported the leak within hours of the initial occurrence, so we didn't yet have confirmation from Intel that the leak was genuine. Intel has now issued a statement to Tom's Hardware confirming the incident:

"Our proprietary UEFI code appears to have been leaked by a third party. We do not believe this exposes any new security vulnerabilities as we do not rely on obfuscation of information as a security measure. This code is covered under our bug bounty program within the Project Circuit Breaker campaign, and we encourage any researchers who may identify potential vulnerabilities to bring them our attention through this program...."


The BIOS/UEFI of a computer initializes the hardware before the operating system has loaded, so among its many responsibilities, is establishing connections to certain security mechanisms, like the TPM (Trusted Platform Module). Now that the BIOS/UEFI code is in the wild and Intel has confirmed it as legitimate, both nefarious actors and security researchers alike will undoubtedly probe it to search for potential backdoors and security vulnerabilities....

Intel hasn't confirmed who leaked the code or where and how it was exfiltrated. However, we do know that the GitHub repository, now taken down but already replicated widely, was created by an apparent LC Future Center employee, a China-based ODM that manufactures laptops for several OEMs, including Lenovo.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm for sharing the news.

"The iPhone 14's new Crash Detection feature, which is supposed to alert authorities when it detects you've been in a car accident, has an unexpected side effect," reports the Verge.

"It dials 911 on rollercoasters." According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the feature has had law enforcement sent to amusement parks on numerous occasions after mistaking a thrill ride's twists, turns, and hard braking for a real emergency....

If the sensors detect that you've been in an accident, your iPhone will display an alert and call emergency services if you don't dismiss it within 20 seconds. When it calls law enforcement, it will play an audio message that alerts authorities you've been in a crash, and also provides them with your location....

[WSJ reporter Joanna Stern] says Warren County, where Kings Island is located, received six emergency calls triggered by park rides since the iPhone 14's release. She also points out that other users have experienced similar issues in amusement parks across the country.
"My time on the crash-detection beat has proven that the feature can absolutely save a life," Stern acknowledged on Twitter. "There's already proof of it helping in real crashes. But there are situations where it works and it shouldn't and others where it doesn't work and it should.

"Such is the story of technology!"

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the story.

An experienced poker player lost to a relative newcomer. But then, "Somehow, the Robbi Jade Lew-Garrett Adelstein scandal diving the poker world just got weirder," reports the New York Post: An internal investigation conducted by Hustler Casino Live — which streamed the game from Los Angeles — has shown that one of their High Stakes Poker Productions employees stole three $5,000 chips from Lew's stack after the broadcast concluded on September 29. The employee, Bryan Sagbigsal, was terminated from his position after he admitted to taking $15,000 in chips from Lew's stack...

The $15,000 worth of chips taken by Sagbigsal was seen as some as him taking his cut of a cheating scam.
"There is zero evidence that I cheated," Lew posted on Twitter, "simply because I did not. I have been thrust into a bizarre situation where I am being asked to prove my innocence continually, and as of yet, there is not a single thread of direct evidence illustrating my guilt. My accusers, now having exhausted buzzing seats, camera rings, microphone water bottles, and other spy paraphernalia, have now moved on to me having an alleged conspiring relationship with someone I do not know... who, in fact, stole from me."

As a precaution the casino's technology and security protocols are now being audited — but the publicity seems good for business. Hustler Casino Live is now calling the hand "The most insane hero call in poker history," and it's already racked up over half a million views on YouTube.

Here's what I see. (Am I missing something?)

After three of the five "community" cards were dealt face up, Garrett Adelstein had four of the five cards needed for a straight flush — leaving nine clubs in the deck left to draw for a flush, and an additional six that would've at least given him a straight. But with no help from the fourth "community" card, Garrett had just a 53% chance of winning. He bet $10,000, but instead of backing down Robbi raised him by $10,000. Garrett then tried an even larger bet, daring Robbi to go all-in with her $109,000 in chips — or fold. Did she sense that this suddenly-higher bet was a bluff? With nothing but a high-card jack, Robbi refused to fold — and won the hand when the fifth card failed to help either her or Garrett.

Iran's government is trying to limit internet access, reports CNBC — while Iranians are trying a variety of technologies to bypass the blocks: Outages first started hitting Iran's telecommunications networks on September 19, according to data from internet monitoring companies Cloudflare and NetBlocks, and have been ongoing for the last two and a half weeks. Internet monitoring groups and digital rights activists say they're seeing "curfew-style" network disruptions every day, with access being throttled from around 4 p.m. local time until well into the night. Tehran blocked access to WhatsApp and Instagram, two of the last remaining uncensored social media services in Iran. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and several other platforms have been banned for years.

As a result, Iranians have flocked to VPNs, services that encrypt and reroute their traffic to a remote server elsewhere in the world to conceal their online activity. This has allowed them to restore connections to restricted websites and apps. On September 22, a day after WhatsApp and Instagram were banned, demand for VPN services skyrocketed 2,164% compared to the 28 days prior, according to figures from Top10VPN, a VPN reviews and research site. By September 26, demand peaked at 3,082% above average, and it has continued to remain high since, at 1,991% above normal levels, Top10VPN said....

Mahsa Alimardani, a researcher at free speech campaign group Article 19, said a contact she's been communicating with in Iran showed his network failing to connect to Google, despite having installed a VPN. "This is new refined deep packet inspection technology that they've developed to make the network extremely unreliable," she said. Such technology allows internet service providers and governments to monitor and block data on a network. Authorities are being much more aggressive in seeking to thwart new VPN connections, she added....

VPNs aren't the only techniques citizens can use to circumvent internet censorship. Volunteers are setting up so-called Snowflake proxy servers, or "proxies," on their browsers to allow Iranians access to Tor — software that routes traffic through a "relay" network around the world to obfuscate their activity.

It was Florida's deadliest hurricane in 87 years, tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane to make landfall in the continental U.S. and killing more than 100 people after veering south into unexpected areas.

But a Rutgers University health psychologist suggests other factors might've made Hurricane Ian more deadly: Ian also underwent rapid intensification, perhaps influenced by climate change, which meant that its wind speeds increased dramatically as it passed over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico before landfall.

Emergency managers typically need at least 48 hours to successfully evacuate areas of southwest Florida. However, voluntary evacuation orders for Lee County were issued less than 48 hours prior to landfall, and for some areas were made mandatory just 24 hours before the storm came ashore. This was less than the amount of time outlined in Lee County's own emergency management plan.

While the lack of sufficient time to evacuate was cited by some as a reason why they stayed behind, there are other factors that may also have suppressed evacuations in some of the hardest hit areas. In order to correctly follow evacuation orders, people need to first know their evacuation zone. Research from other areas of the country indicates that many people don't. That's why the evacuation zone locator websites in the affected counties were crucial. However, so many people were checking their zones that some of these websites crashed in the days before the storm.
The article asks whether the early voluntary evacuation order "lulled some residents into being less concerned" and ultimately compounded problems. "In areas where evacuation orders were issued later, people who weren't expecting to evacuate needed to find and understand this evacuation zone information quickly...."

"People need to know that they are in an area being asked to evacuate — and waiting until the storm is on its way to find out their zone may be too late. Emergency managers need to educate people in advance of imminent storms while also developing more robust websites to handle the queries in the days before the storm."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In the early 2000s, Americans who wanted to catch the local weather forecast at any time might turn on their TV and switch over to Weatherscan, a 24-hour computer-controlled weather forecast channel with a relaxing smooth jazz soundtrack. After 23 years, The Weather Channel announced that Weatherscan will be shutting down permanently on or before December 9. But a group of die-hard fans will not let it go quietly into the night.

Launched in 1999, Weatherscan currently appears in a dwindling number of local American cable TV and satellite markets. It shows automated local weather information on a loop, generated by an Intellistar computer system installed locally for each market. Declining viewership and the ubiquity of smartphone weather apps are the primary reasons it's going offline. There are also technical issues with maintaining the hardware behind the service. "Weatherscan has been dying a slow death over the course of the last 10 years because the hardware is aging," says Mike Bates, a tech hobbyist who collects and restores Weather Channel computer hardware as part of a group of die-hard fans who follow insider news from the company. "It's 20 years old now, and more and more cable companies have been pulling the service." [...]

Hobbyists like Bates (who goes by "techknight" on Twitter) have collected the hardware necessary to run their own Weatherscan stations out of their homes. Some have also created software that simulates the service in a browser. [...] However, getting Weatherscan to run locally was a team effort, primarily by friends named Ethan, Brian, and Jesse. One of the Intellistar computer models behind the service runs FreeBSD on a Pentium 4-based PC in a blue rack-mount enclosure. It includes an ATI card for generating the graphics and a proprietary PowerPC-based card that pulls it all together to make it broadcast-ready. To get Weatherscan working at home, the group of friends found decommissioned Intellistar units on eBay and used forensic tools to reconstruct data from the hard drives, piecing together a working version of the Weatherscan software from multiple sources. Since then, they have exhibited their work at shows like the Vintage Computer Festival Midwest last month.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Twitter is seemingly working to remind people that interesting tweets are something you should click, load, and view while logged into the company's ad-funded service, not merely see in a screenshot. That's why some users are seeing a "Share Tweet?" pop-up whenever the Twitter app notices them taking a screenshot. Social media analyst Matt Navarra noted the two kinds of nudge prompts in a tweet: "Copy link" and "Share Tweet." TechCrunch noted that some of its staff members were receiving the prompt and pointed to another tweet in which Twitter provided both "Copy link" and "Share Tweet" buttons.

Twitter makes money when people visit the site in a browser or load it in Twitter's official apps, then see sponsored tweets or pre-roll advertisements on native videos (users can also sign up for a Twitter Blue subscription). Screenshots, whether shared directly or on competing social platforms, don't create revenue. Engaging with Twitter itself could encourage people to sign up and do more of that. Twitter reported 237.8 million "average monetizable daily active usage" in Q2 2022, up 16.6 percent compared to the same quarter in 2021. The company claims this increase was driven by "ongoing product improvements" and "global conversation around current events." It makes sense why Twitter, the corporate entity, prefers tweet links to screenshots, enough so to A/B/C test a prompt that can make users feel like the Twitter app is both closely watching and scolding them. But for Twitter, the cultural entity, screenshots are enormously valuable, likely more so than links alone. If you've been engaging in Internet culture for years, you've seen why.

Tesla's long-delayed semi-truck has started production, and the company will begin making deliveries as soon as December 1st, Elon Musk has announced on Twitter. Engadget reports: The first batch of Semis will be delivered to Pepsi, which ordered 100 vehicles from the company back in December 2017. As TechCrunch notes, other big companies had also ordered trucks from the automaker, including Walmart and UPS. And in May this year, the automaker opened reservations to more customers for a deposit of $20,000. A Semi costs between $150,000 and $180,000, depending on the range, and it could go as far as 500 miles on a single charge. The Tesla Semi was unveiled back in 2017, with production expected to start by 2019. "While that obviously didn't happen, Musk told employees in an email back in early 2020 that the vehicle was already in limited production and that it was 'time to go all out and bring the Tesla Semi to volume production,'" notes Engadget.

Deliveries were delayed yet again to 2021 and then to 2022 due to the global supply chain shortages affecting the tech and auto industries.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Popular collectible card game Magic: The Gathering is celebrating its 30th anniversary by releasing packs of cards that cost $999. It's called Magic: The Gathering 30th Anniversary Edition and will contain some cards that haven't been reprinted in decades, all with their original art. Nine hundred ninety-nine dollars will buy a collector four sealed booster packs. "Each pack contains 15 cards, 13 cards in the modern frame -- 1 rare, 3 uncommons, 7 commons, and 2 basic lands -- plus one basic land in the retro frame, one additional retro frame card, and a token," according to Magic's website.

These cards are purely collector's items. They're not tournament legal and have different backing than the original cards. It's also a limited edition print run. Magic publisher Wizards of the Coast hasn't said how big that run will be, just that it's limited and that card shops will receive a limited supply with the bulk of the cards being sold online. The set includes reprints of cards, some of which haven't been reprinted in decades, including the Power Nine, nine powerful cards from the early sets that include the iconic Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall. These were some of the earliest cards to be restricted from tournament play because they were overpowered; they were eventually discontinued. A Black Lotus sold at auction in 2021 for $511,000. This new limited edition Black Lotus won't likely reach those lofty pricing heights. Again, these cards can't be used in tournament play and are only meant to be a collector's item. Customers will be buying packs in sets of four for $999, so they're paying $250 for a booster pack they can only ever display and never play with. The community is upset.

Bloomberg News reports: Elon Musk is proposing to buy Twitter for the original offer price of $54.20 a share, Bloomberg News reports. Musk made the proposal in a letter to Twitter, according to the people who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Twitter is (for now) indispensable to following blockchain technology. What might look to outsiders like idle badgering and joking, is in fact the process of people forming allegiances and making deals. Axios reports: "Crypto Twitter" or "CT," refers to all the people tweeting about various blockchain projects all day. They don't all necessarily follow or interact with each other, just as everyone in a town doesn't necessarily know everyone else, but a town still has its own character and so does CT. "Crypto is 24/7/365, and it needs a medium that matches that pace," Variant Fund's Spencer Noon tells Axios.

Sources prominent on Crypto Twitter mostly feel that Twitter has been a useful space for the crypto industry, but not without caveats. Several say it's key to staying abreast of what's hot right now. "Twitter is kind of a 'Great Equalizer' of sorts, where broadcasting continues to be a good way for newcomers to build a brand," Archetype VC's Katherine Wu tells Axios. [...] The best use of Twitter depends on whether you're a trader, investor, content creator or founder, but lots of our sources pointed to Twitter's power as a place for discourse. "To me what matters most is the dialogue," Adamant Research's Tuur Demeester said. "Sometimes I like to just throw ideas out there to immediately connect with those that share similar interests and want to brainstorm," Linda Xie of Scalar Capital said.

It takes a while to get your bearings on CT. There are a lot of inside jokes and in group language that takes time to learn. As [Castle Island Ventures Nic Carter] put it, those obstacles serve as filters to make sure folks in the conversation know something about what they're discussing. "It's like an in-group binding mechanism," Matti of Zee Prime Capital says. "You feel rewarded that you're an insider if you get something, and then comes that sweet release of dopamine." Some notable moments in CT include when ConsenSys staffer Jordan Lyall tweeted a gag in the middle of DeFi Summer that turned into a real project, with a token called MEME. And when Coinbase announced acquiring Neutrino in 2019, "a company with staffers known for enabling some very controversion spying," reports Axios. "The hashtag #DeleteCoinbase trended."

YouTube's Premium paid subscription includes benefits like ad-free viewing, video and song downloads for offline consumption, and background plays. Now, it might also be shifting video streaming in 4K resolution (currently free for all users) to the premium tier. TechCrunch: Over the weekend, users across Reddit and Twitter noted that YouTube had been asking them to upgrade to the premium tier to watch videos in 4K. It's not clear if the change is part of a limited test, or if the company is thinking about capping free users to 1440p resolution. Google declined to comment on the story when contacted by TechCrunch. The company has tried various methods to convert free users into paying ones. One of the most notorious ones was showing them up to 11 unskippable ads before the start of a long video to let them have an uninterrupted experience.

The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear two cases seeking to hold social media companies financially responsible for terrorist attacks. From a report: Relatives of people killed in terrorist attacks in France and Turkey had sued Google, Twitter, and Facebook. They accused the companies of helping terrorists spread their message and radicalize new recruits. The court will hear the cases this term, which began Monday, with a decision expected before the court recesses for the summer, usually in late June. The court did not say when it would hear arguments, but the court has already filled its argument calendar for October and November.

One of the cases the justices will hear involves Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen studying in Paris. The Cal State Long Beach student was one of 130 people killed in Islamic State group attacks in November 2015. The attackers struck cafes, outside the French national stadium and inside the Bataclan theater. Gonzalez died in an attack at La Belle Equipe bistro. Gonzalez's relatives sued Google, which owns YouTube, saying the platform had helped the Islamic State group by allowing it to post hundreds of videos that helped incite violence and recruit potential supporters. Gonzalez's relatives said that the company's computer algorithms recommended those videos to viewers most likely to be interested in them.

A limited but working jailbreak for the PlayStation 5 hardware has reportedly been released, potentially enabling players to install unsigned or unofficial software. From a report: The news was reported on Twitter by modder Lance McDonald, who previously made a name for himself by releasing an unofficial patch that made Bloodborne run at 60 frames per second on PS4. Although McDonald doesn't appear to have discovered the PS5 jailbreak himself, he does show footage of it in action.

As well as showing that the jailbreak gives him access to a debug menu, he also shows that it enables him to install a PS4 PKG file (i.e. a backup of a game), proving this by installing the now-delisted PT demo. At this stage the jailbreak is allegedly extremely limited -- it's only said to work on PS5 consoles with firmware version 4.03, which was released in October 2021 and replaced with version 4.50 in December 2021. According to the exploit's creator, it may be possible to apply the jailbreak to PS5 consoles with earlier firmware versions than 4.03, but later firmware versions won't work at the moment.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg would like you to please stop asking Tumblr to bring back porn because it isn't going to happen. After widespread and inaccurate speculation that Tumblr would lift its ban on adult content, Mullenweg posted a long explanation yesterday of why Tumblr will never go back to the old days. Or, in his words: "the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible." That doesn't mean Tumblr's policies will stay the same. Mullenweg has said before that Automattic (which bought Tumblr in 2019) wants to loosen the rules its old owner Verizon implemented in 2018, and he reiterated that here, echoing comments he made earlier this week. Verizon's ban "took out not only porn but also a ton of art and artists," Mullenweg wrote in his post. "This policy is currently still in place, though the Tumblr and Automattic teams are working to make it more open and common-sense." Tumblr is supposed to implement those policies soon, putting the site more in line with Automattic's WordPress.com blogging platform.

"That said, no modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007," Mullenweg wrote, quoting Tumblr's old liberal policy slogan. (If you're wondering, it was "go nuts, show nuts.") "I agree with 'go nuts, show nuts' in principle, but the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible." On Tumblr, that era helped produce a lot of unique, often queer, blogs with sexual content. The 2018 ban changed the tenor of the site for good -- and this week, many users were enthusiastically but prematurely celebrating its end. Why is returning to that era impossible? For now, it's largely because of intermediaries that play a massive role in how people access the web. Payment processors have long been leery of adult content, and they've stepped up enforcement in recent years, in part because of concerns about child abuse and nonconsensual pornography. Apple's iOS App Store has been staunchly opposed to it since launch. And without those two pieces of infrastructure, running a for-profit site is incredibly difficult. "If Apple permanently banned Tumblr from the App Store, we'd probably have to shut the service down," Mullenweg noted. Some nonprofit sites that do allow things like explicit artwork -- primarily the Archive of Our Own fanworks site -- have remained persistently web-only despite years of requests for apps. [...]

If you reached this article through Twitter or Reddit, you might have a fairly obvious question right now, and Mullenweg raises it: why can both those platforms, fairly unusually for modern social networks, allow a lot of porn? "Ask Apple, because I don't know," says Mullenweg. He speculates that Tumblr and Reddit are both too big to ban -- although Apple has forced moderation changes even for giant services like Facebook. The overall upshot, to Mullenweg, is this: "If you wanted to start an adult social network in 2022, you'd need to be web-only on iOS and side-load on Android, take payment in crypto, have a way to convert crypto to fiat for business operations without being blocked, do a ton of work in age and identity verification and compliance so you don't go to jail, protect all of that identity information so you don't dox your users, and make a ton of money. I do hope that a dedicated service or company is started that will replace what people used to get from porn on Tumblr. It may already exist and I don't know about it. They'll have an uphill battle under current regimes, and if you think that's a bad thing please try to change the regimes. Don't attack companies following legal and business realities as they exist."