CNN tells the story of Sandra Shuster, who'd included an airtag with her daughter's $2,000 lacrosse kit on a flight to Denver (with a stop-over in Chicago's O'Hare airport): When they arrived at Denver after midnight, the bag wasn't on the belt. United representatives at Denver gave them a case number and told them the bag should arrive on the 8.30 a.m. flight from Chicago in just a few hours. When it didn't, Shuster called the toll-free number for lost baggage that she'd been given. "They said, 'Your bag's going to come in later today on one of two flights.' I said 'OK, great,' but it never came. So I called later that afternoon and they said 'Your bag is still in Baltimore,'" says Shuster.

There was just one problem: she already knew it wasn't in Baltimore. Three months earlier, Shuster had bought an AirTag — Apple's tracking devices — to know where her daughter's bag was... [T]he AirTag was showing as being at baggage reclaim at O'Hare. "I told them I could see it at Terminal 1 baggage reclaim in Chicago, and they said 'We have no record of it.' I asked them to call Chicago, and they said 'No, we're not allowed.' They said they'd put notes in the system and the baggage team would take care of it."
The airline had mistakenly attached another customer's baggage-claim number to the luggage — so when it arrived at the stop-over in Chicago, baggage handlers couldn't know its ultimate destination, and it was moved to the "reclaim" belt. There were several more communication misfires — but fortunately, Shuster had more than 30,000 unused air miles...

"I jumped on the plane, flew to Chicago, got to baggage claim, and it took them 30 seconds to give me my bag..." Shuster tells CNN. "What was difficult to comprehend was that it would have taken one call to Chicago to locate it, and nobody seemed able to do that... You can't tell me in this day and age, with all the technology available, that they can't figure this stuff out. Airlines need to do better."

United later refunded Shuster's air miles, along with an apology "for the inconvenience you experienced on your recent trip with United."

The Washington Post reports: California's newly empowered privacy regulators announced their first case Monday, a probe of the data practices of newer-generation cars that are often or always connected to the internet. The California Privacy Protection Agency said its enforcement division would review manufacturer's treatment of data collected from vehicles, including locations, smartphone connections and images from cameras.

The agency was established by a 2020 ballot initiative that toughened the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. As of July 1, it can conduct operations to enforce Californians' right to learn what is being collected about them, the right to stop that information from being spread and the right to have it deleted...

When combined with web surfing habits and other internet data collated by brokers, movement tracking can paint a full portrait that includes a person's home, workplace, shopping habits, religious attendance and medical treatments. Insurance companies also want data on how quickly drivers brake ahead of problems on the road, along with other performance indicators, and they are willing to pay to get it.
The Post notes that data is beamed to business partners of automakers under "vague privacy policies."

"Three of Reddit's biggest communities are no longer focused entirely on John Oliver in a form of protest against Reddit," reports the Verge.

Gizmodo argues that this means "the Reddit protest is finally over. Reddit won." Despite the infinite blackout threats, most moderators relented as the weeks rolled by. Three major holdouts were r/aww, r/pics, and r/videos, some of Reddit's largest communities that account for more than 91 million subscribers. The three subreddits reopened weeks ago but adopted rules by popular vote that prohibited content that did not feature HBO's John Oliver, rendering the forums useless for their previous purposes.

For a while, the subreddits stood strong, but r/videos was the first to backpedal, dropping the John Oliver rule but requiring all posts to feature profanity. Soon that rule was abandoned as well. Last week, the moderators of r/aww announced the John Oliver rule was over, and over the weekend r/pics quietly gave up the protest as well, as reported by the Verge. "More than a month has passed, and as things on the internet go, the passion for the protest has waned and people's attention has shifted to other things," an r/aww moderator wrote in a post about the rule change.

According to Reddark, a site that tracks the subreddit protest, 1,843 of the original 8,829 protesting communities are still dark. But most of these are small communities, and today the only protesting subreddit with over 10 million subscribers is r/fitness.
The Verge: Two other big communities have switched back, too. r/pics (with more than 30 million subscribers) had perhaps been the most visibly tied to John Oliver: Oliver himself posted a series of silly photos specifically for the community to use, and at one point, the moderators of r/pics invited Oliver to join the mod team. But sometime recently, r/pics removed any obvious trace of its connections to John Oliver; the Wayback Machine shows that r/pics was all about John Oliver as of Friday but no longer on Saturday...

r/videos (with more than 26 million subscribers) actually dropped its John Oliver rule back in June; it was replaced by a new rule that all posts needed to contain profanity in the title after a community vote. Earlier this month, the r/videos moderators reverted the rules to what they were before the protests started...

In June, more than 8,000 communities went dark to protest the API pricing, but in the weeks since, many subreddits have opened back up (some after feeling pressure from Reddit) and are operating as they did before. Many users are still disgruntled, though, and made their feelings known in July's r/Place canvas.

More than 1,800 subreddits are still private in protest, according to the Reddark tracker.
Some key passages from the moderator's announcement at r/aww: What about the protest, though; did we win? The short answer is no. The long answer is also no, as Reddit's minimal attempts at positive outreach remain overshadowed by the plethora of depressing developments...

At the end of the day, Reddit's API changes have gone into effect. They did not extend the transition period or reduce the exorbitant prices. They granted exemptions to a few apps and moderation tools, but that's about it. The best thing I can say is that they did honor their commitment to ensuring the continued functionality of some mod tools... Despite some reassurances and promises from Reddit, their conduct and these changes have driven away many developers, leading to the shutdown of some tools and an uncertain future for others.
The announcement with a link labeled "and more importantly," which leads to a picture with a message for Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (who uses the name "Spez" when posting on Reddit.)

The Washington Post reports: A federal judge said the Department of Justice's landmark case alleging Google's dominance over the online search business is anti-competitive can go ahead, throwing out some of the government's claims but ruling that a trial is still necessary.

Google had asked for the judge to make a ruling before the trial, which is scheduled for September.

Some of the government's claims, including those put together by a consortium of state attorneys general that argued the way Google designed its search engine page was unfairly harming competitors like Yelp, were dismissed. But D.C. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said the allegations that Google's overall business practices constitute a monopoly that violates the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act still deserve a trial. "This is a significant victory for Google, knocking out several claims and narrowing the range of activities at issue for trial," said David Olson, an associate professor and antitrust expert at Boston College's law school. "Having said that, the strongest claims against Google remain, so Google still remains at risk of a significant antitrust ruling against it."

The trial will be a major test for Google and the massive business empire it has assembled over the past two decades. The company is still the dominant portal to the internet, exercising immense power over what people see online... The eventual ruling will also be seen as a test for the U.S. government's more aggressive posture on antitrust.

For $99 a night, full-time employees of Google can stay at an on-campus hotel in Mountain View in what the company is deeming a "Summer Special." According to CNBC who obtained the materials, "the special will run through Sept. 30 in hopes it'll 'make it easier for Googlers to transition to the hybrid workplace.'" From the report: Since the promotion is for unapproved business travel, the company will not reimburse their stays, but will require employees to use their personal credit cards, the special's description states. "Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction," the description reads. "Next, you could walk out of your room and quickly grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts." The ad goes on to say that after the work day ends, "you could enjoy a quiet evening on top of the rooftop deck or take in one of the fun local activities."

The Google-owned hotel is situated on a newer campus in Mountain View, California, that it opened last year. The 42-acre campus is adjacent to NASA's Ames Research Center and has capacity to house 4,000 employees working on its ads products, the company said upon its opening. Some employees have commented on the hotel deal in internal discussion forums. One highly rated meme showed movie clips that included a scene in the movie "Mean Girls," where the main character played by Lindsey Lohan says "No, thank you." "Now I can give some of my pay back to Google," another highly rated meme read. Another meme joked that living on campus for the summer could disrupt "work-life balance."

At $99 a night, the hotel would amount to roughly $3,000 a month, employees pointed out in internal discussions viewed by CNBC. One employee pointed out that hotel amenities were not to be ignored. "I pay more and get a lot less in total for my apartment," wrote one employee in a discussion thread. "Though admittedly where I live is much better." Another thought it was still too expensive. "If it was around $60 a night, that could be a fine-ish alternative to apartments, but $99? No thanks." "I would've totally done it, had it fit a certain profile: $3k rent all-in, fully-furnished, unlimited meals, paid utilities, plus housekeeping/cleaning every day," another employee wrote. Another hypothesized the move could be a way to reduce vacancy at the hotel after Google cut corporate travel budgets.

Capella Space's synthetic aperture radar satellites are falling back to Earth much sooner than than the three years they were anticipated to operate, according to publicly available satellite data. TechCrunch reports: The startup has launched a total of ten small satellites to low Earth orbit since 2018, including eight in its family of "Whitney"-class spacecraft. Five of these satellites have reentered the atmosphere since the end of January of this year, including three of the Whitneys. Those Whitney sats were in orbit for less than two-and-a-half years; one, Capella-5, was in orbit for less than two years. That leaves five of the constellation in orbit, including the Capella-9 and Capella-10 launched on March 16, which are operating at an altitude of around 584 km and 588 km, respectively.

According to filings with the Federal Communication Commission, the propulsion system of Capella-9 was built by Phase Four. At least one of the satellites that has reentered prematurely, Capella-5, also used Phase Four propulsion. In that same filing from March 2022, Capella said its Capella-9 satellite would operate at an orbital altitude of 525 km, and maintain an altitude between 475-575 km for three years. It seems this is the typical mission profile of Capella satellites. But Capella-7 and Capella-8, launched in January 2022, appear to be now operating below 400 kilometers, and will likely deorbit in a matter of weeks to a few months. The unexpected decay could be due to a problem with the propulsion system, or a systematic miscalculation of its requirements.

"Probably they [Capella-7 and Capella-8] will reenter in Sep-Oct or so," astronomer and analyst Jonathan McDowell said when reviewing the data at TechCrunch's request. "I suspect propulsion failures but certainly it isn't clear." In a statement to TechCrunch, Capella CEO Payam Banazadeh confirmed that some of the satellites have been deorbiting faster than expected "due to the combination of increased drag due to much higher solar activity than predicted by NOAA and less than expected performance from our 3rd party propulsion system." "We have upgraded our propulsion system on all future satellites to account for these facts, including the launch of our next generation satellite Acadia-1, currently scheduled for launch on August 5th 2023. We plan to launch eight of our next generation Acadia satellites over the next 12 months," he added.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: The New York Police Department took social media influencer Kai Cenat into custody Friday and is considering charges such as "inciting a riot" after thousands-strong crowds gathered in Union Square for a giveaway, leaving multiple people arrested and several police officers injured.

Cenat, who has over 4 million followers on YouTube, over 5 million on Instagram, and 6.5 million on Twitch, said during a Wednesday Twitch stream that he would be hosting a "huge giveaway" Friday at 4 p.m. in Union Square Park. In the stream, he said they would be giving away computers, Play Station 5s, microphones, keyboards, webcams, gaming chairs, headphones and giftcards from a truck in Union Square. "I feel like New York really deserves it," he said.

Thousands of people began gathering at the park around 3 p.m., NYPD chief Jeffrey Maddrey said at a Friday news conference. "Soon the park and the surrounding streets were overrun with people, obstructing vehicular and pedestrian traffic," he said. The crowds spurred the NYPD to activate a "Level 4" response, its highest level of disaster response... "You had people walking around with shovels, axes, and other tools from the construction site," he said. "Individuals were also lighting fireworks, throwing them towards the police, they were throwing them towards each other...."

Several police officers were injured in the frenzy and "quite a few" people were arrested as police worked to clear the crowd, Maddery said... Cenat could be arrested and face charges for inciting a riot, the chief said. He said NYPD Police Commissioner Edward Caban and the city's legal team were discussing possible charges.
Police complained to CNN that the Twitch streamer "had not alerted the police to the gathering or obtained a permit, and it was declared an unlawful assembly."

Cenat streamed live on Twitch on Friday for some portion of the event, posting video from the crowd. In one video seemingly posted from inside a truck, he described the chaotic gathering, saying, "It's everybody for themselves. It's a war out there."

TikTok users in Europe will be able to switch off the personalized algorithm behind its For You and Live feeds as the company makes changes to comply with the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA). The Verge reports: According to TikTok, disabling this function will show users "popular videos from both the places where they live and around the world" instead of content based on their personal interests. These changes relate to DSA rules that require very large online platforms to allow their users to opt out of receiving personalized content -- which typically relies on tracking and profiling user activity -- when viewing content recommendations. To comply, TikTok's search feature will also show content that's popular in the user's region, and videos under the "Following" and "Friends" feeds will be displayed in chronological order when a non-personalized view is selected.

Another change is that European users between the ages of 13 and 17 automatically won't be targeted with personalized ads based on their online activities, rather than having to opt out with a toggle.

Pirate eBook repository Z-Library has launched browser extensions that should make it easier for users to find the site if its current domains are seized in the future. While the site doesn't explicitly mention the U.S. Government crackdown, it likely plays a key role in the decision to make these extensions available. TorrentFreak reports: Since the shadow library is now well aware that its domain names could be taken away at any moment, numerous precautions are being taken to mitigate the risks. A few weeks ago, Z-Library released a dedicated desktop application that should make it easier to access the site. The software has the ability to redirect users to working domains and whenever necessary, connect over the Tor network, which also helps to evade blocking efforts. In an announcement this week, the operators of the shadow library unveiled new precautionary tools to redirect users to working domains, including any new ones, should they be needed.

The new browser extensions are available for both Chrome and Firefox and promise 'seamless access' to alternative domains in the event that existing ones run into trouble. "Say goodbye to searching for available domains, as this handy extension takes care of everything for you. Simplify your online library experience and enjoy seamless access to a world of knowledge, right at your fingertips. "After launching the extension, the process of searching for an available domain will begin. Within some seconds when the domain is found, you will be redirected to the library homepage," Z-Library explains.

While installing browser extensions should always happen with caution, in just a few hours thousands of Z-Library users have already installed the new software. According to the Chrome store, the Z-Library Finder currently has over 7,000 users. These extensions may indeed help to point users to new domain names, but the solution isn't bulletproof. The authorities may attempt to remove the listings from the Chrome and Firefox extension libraries, for example. Even if Z-Library decides to self-host these tools, they still rely on technical infrastructure that could be targeted in the future. That being said, the releases are still notable; it's rare to a service going full steam ahead in the face of an active criminal case.

Google is hoping to lure workers back to the office with a new on-site hotel special, but some workers aren't convinced it's a good deal. From a report: The company said full-time employees can book a room at an on-campus hotel in Mountain View for $99 a night in what it's deeming a "Summer Special," according to materials viewed by CNBC. The description states that the special will run through Sept. 30 in hopes it'll "make it easier for Googlers to transition to the hybrid workplace." Since the promotion is for unapproved business travel, the company will not reimburse their stays, but will require employees to use their personal credit cards, the special's description states.

"Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction," the description reads. "Next, you could walk out of your room and quickly grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts." The ad goes on to say that after the work day ends, "you could enjoy a quiet evening on top of the rooftop deck or take in one of the fun local activities." The Google-owned hotel is situated on a newer campus in Mountain View, California, that it opened last year. The 42-acre campus is adjacent to NASA's Ames Research Center and has capacity to house 4,000 employees working on its ads products, the company said upon its opening.

Threads, Meta's Twitter rival, is struggling to retain users roughly a month after its highly publicized launch, according to fresh industry estimates showing that app engagement has fallen to new lows. From a report: The data from market research firms Similarweb and Sensor Tower highlight the challenges facing Meta as it seeks to exploit the opening created by the chaos surrounding Twitter's management. Threads' daily active user count is down 82% from launch as of July 31, according to Sensor Tower, with just eight million users accessing the app each day.

That is the lowest it has been since the day after the app's release when daily active users peaked at roughly 44 million, Sensor Tower said. People are also opening the app less frequently and spending less time there, Sensor Tower added. On its launch day, Threads users opened the app an average of 14 times and spent an average of 19 minutes scrolling through it, the company reported. By the end of the month, however, those figures had fallen sharply.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Waymo's fourth robotaxi city will be Austin, Texas. It will be a bit of a homecoming for the Alphabet-owned self-driving company. Waymo said that it will kick off the process for a commercial robotaxi service in the city later this year. But that doesn't mean passengers can hail one of the company's driverless vehicles quite yet; Waymo's playbook is to start with manual testing, following by supervised testing, fully autonomous driving, and then, eventually, passenger services. The company has been testing its vehicles on the streets of Austin since March, laying the groundwork for the eventual launch of a commercial ridehailing service.

Waymo says its driverless taxis will traverse "a large portion of the city night and day," covering spots like "the heart of downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin, Hyde Park and more." The company makes no mention of the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, where the taxi business is typically the most lucrative. The company also noted that "autonomous vehicles help improve road safety," a claim that sounds true on the surface but is hard to prove. Waymo has released several datasets that show its vehicles to be adept at avoiding certain collisions. But humans drive billions of miles every year -- orders of magnitude more real-world driving than the comparatively tiny fleet of AVs on the road today. And while there are an unacceptable number of fatalities every year, humans are actually good drivers -- for the most part.

Alibaba said Thursday it is opening up its own artificial intelligence model to third-party developers in a move that would pit it against OpenAI and Meta, which has made similar moves. CNBC reports: In April, Alibaba launched its large language model (LLM) called Tongyi Qianwen. A LLM is an artificial intelligence model trained on huge amounts of data. It is also the basis for generative AI applications, such as ChatGPT -- which generate human-like responses to user prompts. Tongyi Qianwen allows AI content generation in English and Chinese and has different model sizes, including seven billion parameters and above. A model's parameters refer to its power.

Alibaba will be open-sourcing the seven-billion-parameter model called Qwen-7B, along with a version designed for conversational apps, called Qwen-7B-Chat. This means that researchers, academics and companies globally can use the model to create their own generative AI apps without needing to train their own systems, saving time and expense. Companies with more than 100 million monthly active users will require a royalty-free license from Alibaba to do so. While Alibaba might not earn licensing fees from open-sourcing its technology, the distribution will help the company get more users for its AI model.

theodp writes: Wired Editor at Large, Steven Levy, was hit with a $52 bill for a 2.9-mile Uber ride in New York City as he headed to interview Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. "Do you know how much it cost me to go 2.9 miles to where we are now in an Uber?," Levy asked Khosrowshahi. "And he said $20, and I said, 'no it was like $52,' and he said, 'oh my God wow.'" [While Khosrowshahi attributed the head-scratching fee to "surge pricing," Levy insisted that made no sense given the trip took place at "10 a.m. on a sunny weekday and it's not like the president's in town." Uber's CEO blamed inflation for the increased rates, telling Wired during his sit-down that "everything is more expensive."]

When asked for a statement, Uber shared the following: "Riders' fares are a direct result of the city's regulations." "The fact is that they're not subsidizing rides anymore," said Levy of Uber. "And the way that company operates is expensive." Uber, which had recorded more than $31 billion in losses since it launched in 2009, reported its first profit ever on Tuesday.

Pornhub operator MindGeek has blocked all users in Arkansas from the site after the state's new age verification law went into effect on Tuesday. The Verge reports: The Arkansas law, SB 66, doesn't ban Pornhub from operating in the state, but it requires porn sites to verify that a user is 18 by confirming their age with identifying documents. On Wednesday, Pornhub blocked all traffic from IP addresses based in Arkansas in protest, arguing that the law, which was intended to protect children, actually harms users. "While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk," MindGeek wrote in a message replacing the site's front page for affected users. The block also applies to other popular MindGeek adult sites, like RedTube.

The Nokia 130 and 150 are two new updated feature phones from Nokia that ship "with the form of an earlier generation of tech but the software of the current time," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The Nokia 150 is arguably the more worthy of the two; it comes in three colors and features a 2.4-inch QVGA display, a 1,450 mAh removable battery with up to a month of standby time, and a headphone jack for listening to music like we're still pirating it from the internet (though you can also tune in to the built-in FM radio, a feature you'd have to download an app to replicate on an iPhone). The rear-facing 0.3-MP VGA camera is as mediocre as it sounds; it's similar to the camera specs on an LG-made candybar phone I was carting around in 2008. You can save all your data on a MicroSD card and charge the phone with micro USB.

The Nokia 130 has the same size screen and removable battery, but it doesn't have a camera, which makes sense if you were looking at one of these as a secondary device. You probably already have a smartphone that takes satisfying photos. The Nokia 130 and 150 are rated IP52, making them resistant to dust and water but not entirely waterproof. And they both have physical buttons, including a full 12-key number pad, plus navigational buttons to get around the operating system, called Series 30+ or S30+. Nokia developed the software specifically for these entry-level devices, and it made sure to include a revamped Snake game. Nokia swears there are "hours of fun in store," which seems like marketing rehashed from its '90s glory days.

The Nokia 130 and 150 are primarily available abroad. Note that these two models have been around since 2016 and that this latest release is a part of the phone's upgrade cycle. The company, acquired by Finnish conglomerate HMD Mobile, has yet to reveal pricing. But previous generations started at under $50 after converting currencies. It's quite a deal compared to what you'd get with an aging, low-cost Android phone.

Brave Software, maker of the Brave web browser, has tuned its search engine to run on a homegrown index of images and videos in an effort to end its dependency on "Big Tech" rivals. The Register reports: On Thursday, the company said that image and video results from Brave Search -- available on the web at search.brave.com and via its browser -- will be served from Brave's own index. Search indexes are made by visiting online resources -- typically web pages, images, videos, or other files -- with a crawler bot and recording the locations of these resources in a database. And when an internet user submits a query to a search engine, the search engine checks its index (and possible other sources) to find the addresses of resources that correspond to the query keywords. There's actually a lot more to it but that's the basic idea.

Brave now aims to ride the wave of discontent with "Big Tech" by highlighting its commitment to privacy and independence â" small tech. "Brave Search is 100 percent private and anonymous, which sets a high bar for image/video search to meet," the company said in a blog post provided to The Register. "Whether it's a matter of personal safety or personal preference, users should be able to discover content without their search engine reporting and profiling those results to a Big Tech company." [...] Brave argues that having its own index frees the company from content decisions made by others. "Brave is on a mission to build a user-first Web," the company said in its blog post. "That mission starts with the Brave browser and Brave Search. With the release of image and video search, we're continuing to innovate within the search industry, providing viable and preferable products for users who want choice and transparency in their search for information online."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Elon Musk's tunneling company has permission to significantly expand its operations under the city of Las Vegas. Last month, the Las Vegas City Council voted unanimously to approve the Boring Company's plan to dig more tunnels under the city, following in the steps of Clark County, which in May gave a similar thumbs-up to the tunneling concern. The company's plan calls for 68 miles of tunnels and 81 stations, served by a fleet of Tesla electric vehicles, each able to carry three passengers at a time.

Despite the unanimous approval, Mayor Carolyn Goldman had a litany of concerns, including safety, low throughput of passengers, and a lack of accessibility. However, she said that "hotels are begging for transportation options." [...] Should the Boring Company see this project through to completion, 60 of the stations would be in Clark County, mostly concentrated down the Strip and the major casinos, with the remaining 21 in the city of Las Vegas.

Google is making it a lot easier to find and remove your contact information from its search results. From a report: The company will now send out notifications when it finds your address, phone number, or email on the web, allowing you to review and request the removal of that information from Search. All this takes place from Google's "results about you" dashboard on mobile and web, which it first rolled out last September. With the update, you can find your information on Google without actually having to conduct the search yourself. Once you input your personal information, the dashboard will automatically pull up websites that contain any matches, letting you review each webpage it appears on and then submit a request to remove it.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Microsoft releases new test builds of Windows, there are usually a handful of features that are announced but only actually enabled for a small subset of testers. Sometimes it's because the company is A/B testing a couple of different versions of the same thing or because Microsoft wants to roll out major changes to a few users before rolling them out to everyone. Users normally have little control over whether new features actually appear in their Windows beta installs, but Microsoft has internal software called StagingTool that its own developers can use to switch things on and off themselves.

And now StagingTool has leaked to the public, thanks to a "bug bash" the company is running this week to find and fix problems before the next big batch of new Windows features releases this fall. As reported by The Verge, some bug bash participants were sent on "quests" that explicitly mentioned using the StagingTool to turn on specific features. Those quests and the tool itself have since been removed from Microsoft's servers, but StagingTool is already being freely distributed among Windows enthusiasts who want more control over the features they see.