"A researcher from cloud and endpoint protection provider WithSecure has discovered an unpatchable flaw in Microsoft Office 365 Message Encryption," reports VentureBeat. "The flaw enables a hacker to infer the contents of encrypted messages." OME uses the electronic codebook (ECB) block cipher, which leaks structural information about the message. This means if an attacker obtains many emails they can infer the contents of the messages by analyzing the location and frequency of patterns in the messages and matching these to other emails. For enterprises, this highlights that just because your emails are encrypted, doesn't mean they're safe from threat actors. If someone steals your email archives or backups, and accesses your email server, they can use this technique to sidestep the encryption.

The discovery comes shortly after researchers discovered hackers were chaining two new zero-day Exchange exploits to target Microsoft Exchange servers.

WithSecure originally shared its discovery of the Office 365 vulnerability with Microsoft in January 2022. Microsoft acknowledged it and paid the researcher through its vulnerability reward program, but hasn't issued a fix.

It's been one year since Facebook changed its name to "Meta Platforms," remembers The Street. So after Mark Zuckerberg "bought the Oculus Quest VR headset, rebranded it Meta Quest, and formed Reality Labs solely to work on all projects related to the metaverse" — what happened next? Meta's shares and market value have dropped and Zuckerberg's personal fortune has shrunk, falling from $125 billion in January to $49.1 billion at last check, putting him No. 23 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Reality Labs is facing the hard reality that it's pouring out gallons of red ink, losing $10 billion last year and about $5.7 billion so far in 2022.

And leaked internal documents reveal discussions between Reality Labs management and employees, indicating that "Horizon Worlds" [Meta's flagship metaverse for consumers] is ridden with game-breaking bugs, leading to a "quality lockdown" for the rest of the year.
In fact, Horizon Worlds is also "failing to meet internal performance expectations," reports CNBC, citing internal company documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal: Meta initially aimed to reach 500,000 monthly active users in Horizon Worlds by the end of the year, but the current figure is less than 200,000, according to the report. Additionally, the documents showed that most users didn't return to Horizon after the first month on the platform, and the number of users has steadily declined since spring, the Journal said.

Only 9% of worlds are visited by at least 50 people, and most are never visited at all, according to the report."
"An empty world is a sad world," one internal document reportedly adds. And Fortune cited some more discouraging statistics from the Journal's article: - Meta wants users to create their own worlds using Horizon's tools. Less than 1% are doing so.

- A tip feature to reward creators for their efforts has generated payouts of under $500 globally. Cumulatively, Horizon's worlds have brought in only about $10,000 in "In-World Payments".

- Retention rates for the Quest virtual-reality headsets — sold by Meta to access Horizons — have dropped in each of the past three years.
CNBC also notes that the report "comes as the company's stock falls, user numbers decline and advertisers cut spending. Meta shares are down 62% so far this year...." So how did Meta respond to the Journal's article? A Meta spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that the company continues to make improvements to the metaverse, which was always meant to be a multiyear project. Representatives for Meta didn't immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

Meta has said it will release a web version of Horizon for mobile devices and computers this year, but the spokesman didn't have any launch dates to disclose.

"Public officials in Washington for years have sparred along partisan lines over whether social media platforms take down too much or too little hate speech and misinformation," reports the Washington Post's politics/tech newsletter, The Technology 202.

"A council launching this week aims to sidestep those disputes by proposing reforms that tackle issues of bipartisan concern, including children's safety and national security." The newly minted Council for Responsible Social Media, set up by the nonpartisan nonprofit Issue One, features a wide-ranging and influential lineup of former U.S. lawmakers and federal officials, advocates, scholars, industry leaders and whistleblowers... "This is not a think tank. This is an action tank," former Democratic House majority leader Dick Gephardt told The Technology 202. "We want to see results...."

"The core goal of the commission is to really show that there are bipartisan paths forward ... that involve having companies have to actually talk about what is their role in society," Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said in an interview. Haugen said the council can move the debate around social media accountability forward by focusing on areas of "common ground," like concerns around algorithmic amplification, transparency and platform design choices. Haugen said proposals the council might explore include giving users, particularly children, the option to "reset algorithms" so they do not keep wandering down the same risky "rabbit holes." By focusing on systemic issues, she said, the group might be able to help build support for ideas that sidestep thorny speech debates. The council may also rally around legislation that already has bipartisan support, such as recent Senate bills on kids' online safety and platform transparency, Haugen said....

The council is also poised to shine a brighter spotlight on how U.S. companies may be playing into the hands of foreign adversaries — scrutiny that has largely focused on TikTok, owned by Beijing-based tech giant ByteDance.... Haugen said one concept the group may explore is requiring "consistent reporting" by companies about how much they are investing to counter foreign influence operations.
The Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (introduced in 2021) "would require social media firms to comply with researcher data requests for external audits," reports the Guardian. "Under the proposed law, failure to do so could result in loss of legal protections for content hosted on their platform."

"There are a number of large opportunities today that were not on the table a year ago in terms of moving forward in a bipartisan way," Haugen told the Guardian. "They just need a push over the finish line."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: As it turns out, the Google Pixel 7 series appears to be the first set of Android smartphones that only support 64-bit applications. [Android expert Mishaal Rahman first reported the news.] Rahman later corrected himself to say that it's a 64-bit Zygote but a 32-bit and 64-bit userspace, not a 64-bit only build of Android 13 as initially reported. This certainly lends credence to the claim that the Google Pixel tablet may come with a 64-bit only build of Android 13, though.

What this means is that for any apps that don't have 64-bit libraries, you won't be able to install them. This includes older versions of apps such as Jetpack Joyride and even older, completely defunct apps like Flappy Bird. It's not as if Tensor G2 doesn't support it either -- its three different cores all support AArch32 execution. Google could have enabled 32-bit support as they have done in its previous smartphones. Listing the Android Binary Interfaces (ABI) returns that there is nothing present for "armeabi-v7a" or "armeabi". "arm64-v8a" support is listed, but as per the Android documentation, it only supports the AArch64 instruction set.

What does this mean, and does it have any benefits? Most benefits won't really be visible to consumers, as these improvements are primarily found in heightened security, better performance, and reduced processing cost thanks to the lack of additional ABIs. All apps on the Google Play Store have had to have 64-bit support since August 2019, and the company stopped serving 32-bit apps that don't have any 64-bit support last year.

AmiMoJo shares a report from MacRumors: iOS 16 continues to leak data outside an active VPN tunnel, even when Lockdown mode is enabled, security researchers have discovered. Speaking to MacRumors, security researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry explained that iOS 16's approach to VPN traffic is the same whether Lockdown mode is enabled or not. The news is significant since iOS has a persistent, unresolved issue with leaking data outside an active VPN tunnel.

According to a report from privacy company Proton, an iOS VPN bypass vulnerability had been identified in iOS 13.3.1, which persisted through three subsequent updates. Apple indicated it would add Kill Switch functionality in a future software update that would allow developers to block all existing connections if a VPN tunnel is lost, but this functionality does not appear to prevent data leaks as of iOS 15 and iOS 16. Mysk and Bakry have now discovered that iOS 16 communicates with select Apple services outside an active VPN tunnel and leaks DNS requests without the user's knowledge.

Mysk and Bakry also investigated whether iOS 16's Lockdown mode takes the necessary steps to fix this issue and funnel all traffic through a VPN when one is enabled, and it appears that the exact same issue persists whether Lockdown mode is enabled or not, particularly with push notifications. This means that the minority of users who are vulnerable to a cyberattack and need to enable Lockdown mode are equally at risk of data leaks outside their active VPN tunnel. [...] Due to the fact that iOS 16 leaks data outside the VPN tunnel even where Lockdown mode is enabled, internet service providers, governments, and other organizations may be able to identify users who have a large amount of traffic, potentially highlighting influential individuals. It is possible that Apple does not want a potentially malicious VPN app to collect some kinds of traffic, but seeing as ISPs and governments are then able to do this, even if that is what the user is specifically trying to avoid, it seems likely that this is part of the same VPN problem that affects iOS 16 as a whole.

The National Science Foundation announced Thursday that it will not rebuild a renowned radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which was one of the world's largest until it collapsed nearly two years ago. The Associated Press reports: Instead, the agency issued a solicitation for the creation of a $5 million education center at the site that would promote programs and partnerships related to science, technology, engineering and math. It also seeks the implementation of a research and workforce development program, with the center slated to open next year in the northern mountain town of Arecibo where the telescope was once located. The solicitation does not include operational support for current infrastructure at the site that is still in use, including a 12-meter radio telescope or the Lidar facility, which is used to study the upper atmosphere and ionosphere to analyze cloud cover and precipitation data.

The decision was mourned by scientists around the world who used the telescope at the Arecibo Observatory for years to search for asteroids, planets and extraterrestrial life. The 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) dish also was featured in the Jodie Foster film "Contact" and the James Bond movie "GoldenEye." The reflector dish and the 900-ton platform hanging 450 feet above it previously allowed scientists to track asteroids headed to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable. The Arecibo Observatory collapsed in on itself in December 2020, after the telescope suffered two major cable malfunctions in the two months prior. The National Science Foundation released shocking footage of the moment when support cables snapped, causing the massive 900-ton structure suspended above Arecibo to fall onto the observatory's iconic 1,000-foot-wide dish.

Apple AirTags "are allowed on Lufthansa flights," Lufthansa announced this week — the opposite of their position last Sunday, remembers SFGate: The airline insisted the tech was "dangerous" and referred to International Civil Aviation Organization guidelines (set by the United Nations's specialized agency that recommends air transport policy) stipulating that baggage trackers are subject to the dangerous goods regulations. ["Furthermore, due to their transmission function, the trackers must be deactivated during the flight if they are in checked baggage," Lufthansa added on Twitter, "and cannot be used as a result"]
Ars Technica reports on the public relations debacle that then ensued: Outcry, close reading of the relevant sections (part 2, section C) of ICAO guidelines, and accusations of ulterior motives immediately followed. AppleInsider noted that the regulations are meant for lithium-ion batteries that could be accidentally activated; AirTag batteries are not lithium-ion, are encased, and are commonly used in watches, which have not been banned by any airline. The site also spoke with "multiple international aviation experts" who saw no such ban in ICAO regulations. One expert told the site the ban was "a way to stop Lufthansa from being embarrassed by lost luggage...."

Numerous people pointed out that Lufthansa, in its online World Shop, sells Apple AirTags. One Ars staffer noted that Lufthansa had previously dabbled in selling a smart luggage tag, one that specifically used RFID and BLE to program an e-ink display with flight information. On Tuesday, Apple told numerous publications that it, too, disagreed with Lufthansa's interpretation. It went unsaid but was strongly implied that a company that is often the world's largest by revenue would take something like air travel regulations into consideration when designing portable find-your-object devices....

Representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration said early this week that Bluetooth-based trackers were allowed in checked luggage. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said its regulations could "not in itself ban or allow" trackers, but airlines could determine their own guidelines.

On Wednesday, Lufthansa walked back the policy under the cover of "The German Aviation Authorities (Luftfahrtbundesamt)," which the airline said in a tweet "shared our risk assessment, that tracking devices with very low battery and transmission power in checked luggage do not pose a safety risk." This would seem to imply either that Lufthansa was acting on that authority's ruling without having previously mentioned it, or that Lufthansa had acted on its own and has now found an outside actor to approve their undoing.

Alberta's engineering regulator is in a fight with the province's technology sector, insisting anyone with the title "software engineer" must hold a permit -- and pay fees for that right. The Globe and Mail reports: The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA), has asked a court to order one of the province's leading software companies, Octopusapp, known as Jobber, to stop using the term "engineer" in job titles and postings unless it gets a permit from the regulator. That has caused an uproar in Alberta's tech sector. On Friday, the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) published an open letter signed by chief executive officers of 32 Alberta tech companies, including Jobber's Sam Pillar, calling on Premier Danielle Smith to stop "regulator overreach" by APEGA.

The letter says APEGA's "aggressive position" would result in "onerous, restrictive and unnecessary certification requirements" for developers, and harm companies' ability to compete for talent. "If we cannot effectively compete for the best employees while headquartered in Alberta, we must seriously consider whether this is a place where our companies can succeed,â states the letter signed by CEOs of Benevity, Symend, Neo Financial Technologies and others. CCI president Benjamin Bergen said he hoped Ms. Smith, who pledged to cut red tape while campaigning to lead the United Conservative Party, would take action "because this is really a red tape issue. It is the only jurisdiction globally that is pushing this. It's making Alberta uncompetitive in the tech sector."

APEGA and Canada's 11 other provincial and territorial engineering regulators have complained for years about companies or individuals who use the titles "software engineer" and "computer engineer," arguing they are prohibited from doing so. In July, Engineers Canada, which represents the regulators, issued a joint statement calling for individuals to be prohibited from using the offending titles unless they are licensed as engineers. "Professional engineers are held to high professional and ethical standards and work in the public interest," it said. "The public places a high degree of trust in the profession and these layers of accountability and transparency help keep Canadians safe." The regulators are mandated to enforce their relative statutes and have sporadically taken legal action to protect their turf. [...] Provincial and territorial laws regulating engineers vary. Alberta's Engineering and Geoscience Professions Act states no individual, corporation or partnership can use the word "engineer" in a job title unless they are "a professional engineer, licensee or permit holder entitled to engage in the practice of engineering." A spokesperson for Alberta labour minister Kaycee Madu said in an e-mail the government would work with the parties to resolve the issue, adding: "We are concerned by any regulations that impede our competitiveness in the world skilled-labour market."

Meanwhile, Erum Afsar, director of enforcement with APEGA, said in an interview: "What we are doing is regulating what the government has legislated us to do. If you're using that title, you should be registered with APEGA."

Further reading: Oregon Fines Man For Writing a Complaint Email Stating 'I Am An Engineer'

The nation's telecommunications regulator has been without a Democratic majority for the entirety of President Biden's 21-month tenure, hamstringing efforts to restore open internet protections and close the digital divide. From a report: Breaking the deadlock at the Federal Communications Commission hinges on confirming Gigi Sohn, a longtime public interest advocate and former Democratic FCC official who was first nominated by the White House nearly a year ago. As the midterm elections approach and Democrats' ability to retain their narrow control of the Senate remains uncertain, Sohn's supporters are warning Congress that the clock is ticking to lock in a majority at the agency. On Friday, about 250 industry and public interest groups wrote a letter to top Senate leaders calling for a vote on Sohn's nomination before Congress adjourns at the end of the year.

"The FCC needs a full commission as it begins to deliberate on upcoming critical decisions that will have profound impacts on the economy and the American people," leaders from groups including the Consumer Technology Association, Rural Wireless Association and Color Of Change wrote in a letter shared exclusively with The Washington Post. The push from Sohn's supporters follows what her allies describe as an unprecedented effort from some telecommunications and media lobbyists to block her nomination. Biden's failure to secure a majority or full complement of commissioners at the FCC marks one of the longest delays in recent memory for a first-term president. "It's insane," said Greg Guice, the director of Public Knowledge's government affairs team who has worked in roles related to tech regulation for more than 20 years. (Sohn previously worked at Public Knowledge, which is among the signatories of the Friday letter). Lobbyists "know that being down one seat means they can better control the agenda," he said.

Nvidia is pausing the launch of its upcoming 12GB RTX 4080 graphics card. After originally unveiling the 12GB RTX 4080 last month alongside a much more powerful 16GB model, Nvidia now admits it messed up with the naming. From a report: "The RTX 4080 12GB is a fantastic graphics card, but it's not named right," says Nvidia in a blog post. "Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing." Nvidia is now pausing the launch of the 12GB RTX 4080 model but will still go ahead and launch the 16GB version on November 16th. Criticism had been building over Nvidia's decision to label the 12GB model as an RTX 4080, particularly when the 16GB model was so different.

Turkey criminalized the spread of what authorities describe as false information on digital platforms, giving the government new powers in the months remaining before elections. From a report: The measure, proposed by the governing AK Party and its nationalist ally MHP, is part of a broader "disinformation" law that was adopted by parliament on Thursday. It mandates a jail term of one to three years for users who share online content that contains "false information on the country's security, public order and overall welfare in an attempt to incite panic or fear." Media groups and opposition parties have decried the bill as censorship, seeing it as a move to stifle critics and journalists in the run-up to elections set for next year. "The crime is defined with rather vague and open-ended terms," said Mustafa Kuleli, vice president of the European Federation of Journalists. "It is not clear how prosecutors will take action against those who allegedly spread false information." Other articles in the law range from amendments to issuance of press cards to the procedure of correcting "false" information online.

The company formerly known as Facebook earlier this week announced -- and demonstrated -- that avatars on its metaverse will soon have legs. Here's an update on that: While the updates bringing full-body avatars aren't expected until 2023, Zuckerberg was clearly seen jumping around in the video, giving everyone an early look at the tech. Or was he?

Anyone who has ever been around any piece of marketing ever made should know by now that not everything is as it seems when a company is trying to sell you something. And in this case, the video Meta showed off was made with some help. As UploadVR's Ian Hamilton has since reported, Meta has issued a follow-up statement, which says, "To enable this preview of what's to come, the segment featured animations created from motion capture."

By the time Apple introduces its much-anticipated mixed reality headset -- planned for sometime next year -- Meta Platforms will have had the advantage of selling products in the category to the public for almost seven years. But Apple's device will also have a few technological tricks up its sleeve that even the latest Meta headset can't boast of. From a report: For example, Apple's device is expected to have the ability to scan the irises of people wearing the headsets so they can quickly log into their accounts simply by putting the devices on their heads, according to two people who helped develop the Apple headset. The capability will make it easier for multiple people to use the same device and allow them to quickly make payments inside the headset, just as iPhones allow people to confirm payments using scans of their fingerprints or faces, the people said.

The planned iris-scanning features, which haven't been previously reported, fill out the details about the Apple headset that have begun trickling out over the last year or so. Apple's device is also expected to have 14 cameras, as The Information previously reported, compared to the 10 on the headset Meta announced earlier this week, the Quest Pro. The abundance of cameras is designed to better capture the body movements of people wearing the headsets so Apple's technology can more faithfully represent them through their digital avatars. The setup includes two downward-facing cameras to capture a user's legs, a feature the Quest Pro doesn't have, the people said.

In a press release on Wednesday, Amazon said it will launch two prototype satellites for its Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation in early 2023. They will be riding into orbit on a Vulcan Centaur rocket from the United Launch Alliance (ULA). The Verge reports: The company says the launch will let it perform tests on its satellite network technology with data from space and that the data will "help finalize design, deployment, and operational plans for our commercial satellite system." The timeframe marks a slight delay from Amazon's original plan; last year, the company announced it would launch the prototypes in Q4 of 2022, using a completely different rocket from a company called ABL Space Systems.

Early 2023 isn't too far away, but there are still a lot of things that have to go right for the launch to happen on schedule. For one, Amazon needs to actually finish building the satellites, which its press release says will be completed later this year. The rocket also isn't done yet -- ULA said in a press release on Wednesday that it expects to have Vulcan fully assembled by November and tested by December -- for now, though, it still has to install the engines. It's not exactly a proven launch platform, either; this will be the rocket's first flight.

Both companies have deadlines to meet. As The Washington Post points out, ULA has to launch Vulcan twice before Q4 2023 to prove that it's reliable enough to carry out missions for the US Space Force. Meanwhile, Amazon has to launch half of its satellites by 2026 to keep its FCC license. That's further away than the end of next year, but given that Amazon's constellation is set to be made up of 3,236 satellites, that's going to require quite a few launches in the next few years. Thirty-eight of them are set to use the Vulcan, while several others will be with rockets from Arianespace and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. (Fun fact: the BE-4 engines that Vulcan uses are also from Blue Origin.) Notably absent from its list of partners is SpaceX, which other satellite providers like Lynk and AST SpaceMobile have used to launch equipment into space.

"Sony and Honda have officially launched their joint mobility venture that aims to start delivering premium electric vehicles with automated driving capabilities in the United States in the spring of 2026, followed by Japan in the second half of 2026," reports TechCrunch. Details are scarce but the partnership appears to produce what the companies promise to be a wildly smart vehicle that's heavily focused on keeping its passengers entertained. Slashdot reader SouthSeb shares the news with us, writing: Since cars are expected to fully drive themselves in a near future, how to maintain their occupants entertained seems to be the next big question. It makes one wonder if cars are going to radically change and become more and more like living rooms or office spaces on wheels. "The new EV, which will be initially manufactured at Honda's North America factory, will be developed with Level 3 automated driving capabilities under limited conditions, and with Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems that can handle situations as complex as urban driving," reports TechCrunch. "Sony will provide the sensors and tech for the autonomous capabilities, as well as all of the other software, from cloud-based services to entertainment, that drivers will hopefully be able to enjoy all the better for not having to actually drive the car all the time. The companies didn't share too much about what the infotainment system would look like, but they did say the metaverse would be involved."

"[Sony Honda Mobility] aims to evolve mobility space into entertainment and emotional space, by seamlessly integrating real and virtual worlds, and exploring new entertainment possibilities through digital innovations such as the metaverse," according to SHM.

A year after announcing its "Project Starline" video booth idea, Google says it's expanded enterprise testing with third parties and is working on making Starline "more accessible," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Project Starline basically asks the question, "What if Zoom was a giant, sit-down arcade machine?" While the home console version of video chat just involves a tiny camera above your laptop screen, Starline brings 3D video chat to life in a 7x7-foot sit-down booth, with seemingly no regard given to cost, size, or commercialization. The goal is to make it seem like the other person is in the room with you, and Google categorizes it as a "research project." As for what Starline actually is, a Google Research paper contains a good amount of detail. The display side of the video booth features 14 cameras and 16 IR projectors, which all work to create, capture, and track a real-time, photorealistic 3D avatar of the user. Four microphones and two speakers don't just play back speech; spatialized audio and dynamic beamforming supposedly make the speech sound like it's coming out of the avatar's mouth.

People who have tried Starline seem to like it, but considering you have to be personally invited by Google to try it, that's only a very small handful of people. It's hard to imagine much of a market for what must be a six-figure video booth the size of a small bathroom, but Google is pushing ahead with more testing. A Google statement says: "Today, Project Starline prototypes are found in Google offices across the US, with employees using the technology every day for meetings, employee onboarding and building rapport between colleagues." The company continues: "Beyond Google employees, we've also invited more than 100 enterprise partners in areas like media, healthcare and retail to participate in demos at Google's offices and provide us with feedback on the experience and applications to their businesses. We see many ways Project Starline can add business value across a number of industries, and we remain focused on making it more accessible." Salesforce, WeWork, T-Mobile, and Hackensack Meridian Health have signed up to try it. WeWork, a company based around renting too-expensive-to-own office space, seems particularly enthused with the idea.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: California's roads just got a little smarter with the passage of a bill that paves the way for the sale of digital license plates across the state. The technology allows for emergency messaging like marking the car stolen or indicating an Amber Alert, and can be personalized through an app with touts like "Go Warriors" or "Go Lakers" to cheer on the local sports teams. The pesky task of car registration also will become easier with DMV auto-renewals, eliminating the need for registration cards and stickers. California-based startup Reviver is the only company offering digital license plates right now, and they're expensive, costing up to $1,100 for four years for a hard-wired version. (The cost for a traditional license plate, registration card and sticker totals $69, according to state's DMV.) A battery-powered version is available for an about $20 per month subscription, or $215 a year, for four years. Privacy advocates have concerns that the devices could be hacked and tracked. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also been "fighting for years to restrict police from using automated license plate readers to surveil neighborhoods for location data that can detect travel patterns of targeted vehicles," reports Bloomberg.

Despite this, Reviver has continued to expand to Arizona and Michigan, where digital license plates are already approved.

Nearly four years after its last major release, VirtualBox 7.0 arrives with a... host of new features. Chief among them are Windows 11 support via TPM, EFI Secure Boot support, full encryption for virtual machines, and a few Linux niceties. From a report: The big news is support for Secure Boot and TPM 1.2 and 2.0, which makes it easier to install Windows 11 without registry hacks (the kind Oracle recommended for 6.1 users). It's strange to think about people unable to satisfy Windows 11's security requirements on their physical hardware, but doing so with a couple clicks in VirtualBox, but here we are. VirtualBox 7.0 also allows virtual machines to run with full encryption, not just inside the guest OSâ"but logs, saved states, and other files connected to the VM. At the moment, this support only works through the command line, "for now," Oracle notes in the changelog.

This is the first official VirtualBox release with a Developer Preview for ARM-based Macs. Having loaded it on an M2 MacBook Air, I can report that the VirtualBox client informs you, extensively and consistently, about the non-production nature of your client. The changelog notes that it's an "unsupported work in progress" that is "known to have very modest performance." A "Beta Warning" shows up in the (new and unified) message center, and in the upper-right corner, a "BETA" warning on the window frame is stacked on top of a construction-style "Dev Preview" warning sign. It's still true that ARM-based Macs don't allow for running operating systems written for Intel or AMD-based processors inside virtual machines. You will, however, be able to run ARM-based Linux installations in macOS Venture that can themselves run x86 processors using Rosetta, Apple's own translation layer.

Firefox Relay, a Mozilla service designed to hide your "real" email address by giving you virtual ones to hand out, is expanding to offer virtual phone numbers. From a report: In a blog post Mozilla product manager Tony Amaral-Cinotto explains that the relay service generates a phone number for you to give out to companies if you suspect they might use it to send you spam messages in the future, or if you think they might share it with others who will. The idea is that handing out this alternative phone number makes it easier to block spam phone calls or texts in the future. You can either block all calls or texts sent to your relay number, or just block specific contacts. Importantly it lets you keep your "real" phone number private, which is something you might want to consider if it's a number you use to receive sensitive information like two-step verification codes via SMS. Once you've signed up, the Firefox phone number masking service offers 50 minutes of incoming calls and 75 text messages a month. The phone number masking service is also more expensive at $4.99 a month (or $3.99 a month when paid annually), while the email service offers a choice between a free tier and a premium tier costing $1.99 a month ($0.99 a month when paid annually).

Leading chip equipment suppliers have suspended sales and services to semiconductor manufacturers in China, as new US export controls disrupt the Chinese tech industry and global companies' operations. From a report: Lam Research, Applied Materials and KLA Corporation, US companies which hold dominant shares in certain segments of the semiconductor manufacturing process, have all taken immediate measures to comply with the new rules, according to several people with direct knowledge of the matter. ASML, the Netherlands-based global leader in chipmaking equipment, has told its US staff to stop serving all Chinese customers while it assesses the sanctions.

The new restrictions, announced on Friday last week, ban the export to China of US semiconductor equipment that cannot be provided by any foreign competitor. They also impose a licence requirement for exports of US tools or components to China-based fabrication plants, or fabs, that make advanced chips, and for exports of items used to develop Chinese homegrown chip production equipment. They also require any US citizen or entity to seek permission from the Department of Commerce for providing support to Chinese fabs.